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I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.

Fernando Pessoa

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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
Found
Reality
Life
Meant
Wasn
Came

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

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I crave time in all its duration, and I want to be myself unconditionally.
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We worship perfection because we can't have it if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.
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Yes, talking to people makes me sleepy.
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We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.
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You breathe better when you're rich.
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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
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...the painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad.
Fernando Pessoa
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Today I suddenly experienced an absurd but quite valid sensation. I realized, in an intimate lightning flash, that I am no one. No one, absolutely no one.
Fernando Pessoa
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I never was but an isolated bon vivant, which is absurd or a mystic bon vivant, which is an impossible thing.
Fernando Pessoa
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Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.
Fernando Pessoa
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In any spirit that isn't deformed there is the belief in God. In any spirit that is not deformed there isn't the belief in a particular God.
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The sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese.
Fernando Pessoa
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The perfect man of pagans was the perfection of the man there is the perfect man of christians, the perfection of the man there isn't the buddhists' perfect man, the perfection of not existing a man.
Fernando Pessoa
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The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.
Fernando Pessoa
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I walk along a street and see in the faces of the passersby not the expression they really have but the expression they would have for me if they knew about my life and how I am, if I carried, transparent in my gestures and my face, the ridiculous, timid abnormality of my soul.
Fernando Pessoa
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I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist. I’m the space between what I’d like to be and what others made of me. Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.
Fernando Pessoa
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Every spoken word double-crosses us. The written word is the only tolerable form of communication, as it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls but a ray of light between stars.
Fernando Pessoa
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I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.
Fernando Pessoa
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To narrate is to create, for living is just being lived.
Fernando Pessoa
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My soul's the present shadow of a presence gone.
Fernando Pessoa