Quote

Whether or not they exist we are slaves to our gods.

Fernando Pessoa

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Fernando Pessoa
Age: 47 †
Born: 1888
Born: June 13
Died: 1935
Died: November 30
Author
Essayist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Translator
Writer
Lisboa
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa
Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
Alberto Caeiro
Ricardo Reis
Bernardo Soares
Pessoa
Slaves
Gods
Slave
Exist
Whether

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

Image
Wasting time has an esthetics to it.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Every man who deserves to be famous knows it is not worth the trouble.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Your poems are of interest to mankind your liver isn't. Drink till you write well and feel sick. Bless your poems and be damned to you.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
And let our despite go to those who work and fight and our hate to those who hope and trust.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
When I write, I solemnly visit myself.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
If this be to have sense, if to be awake Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things, For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take And for truth commune with imaginings
Fernando Pessoa
Image
In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
These pages are not my confession they’re my definition. And I feel, as I begin to write it, that I can write it with some semblance of truth.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Nostalgia! I feel it even for someone who meant nothing to me, out of anxiety for the flight of time and a sickness bred of the mystery of life. If one of the faces I pass daily on the streets disappears, I feel sad yet they meant nothing to me, other than being a symbol of all life.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I don't believe in the landscape.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Life is good, but Wine is better.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
It's been a long time since I've been me.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
God wills, man dreams, the work is born.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
There is no safe standard to tell man from animals.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Never having discovered qualities in myself which could attract someone else, I could never believe that anyone felt attracted to me.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I seek and don’t find myself. I belong to chrysanthemum hours, neatly lined up in flowerpots.
Fernando Pessoa