Quote

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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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
Word
Stone
Form
Philosophical
Light
Crosses
Tolerable
Soul
Souls
Bridge
Every
Stones
Rays
Communication
Double
Written
Spoken
Stars
Bridges

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

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I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.
Fernando Pessoa
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Art lies because it's social.
Fernando Pessoa
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I never cared about whatever tragic event happened in China. It's faraway decoration, even if in blood and plague.
Fernando Pessoa
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I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
Fernando Pessoa
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I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.
Fernando Pessoa
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The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.
Fernando Pessoa
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Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.
Fernando Pessoa
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Attention to detail and a perfectionist instinct, far from stimulating action, are character qualities that lead to renunciation. Better to dream than to be.
Fernando Pessoa
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Have you ever considered, beloved other, how invisible we are to each other? We look at each other without seeing. We listen to each other and hear only a voice inside out self. The words of others are mistakes of our hearing, shipwrecks of our understanding. How confidently we believe OUR meanings of other people's words.
Fernando Pessoa
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To love is to tire of being alone it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves. (It is exceedingly important that we not love.)
Fernando Pessoa
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The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own
Fernando Pessoa
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Never having discovered qualities in myself which could attract someone else, I could never believe that anyone felt attracted to me.
Fernando Pessoa
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To narrate is to create, for living is just being lived.
Fernando Pessoa
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Should you ask me if I'm happy, I'll answer that I'm not.
Fernando Pessoa
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We’ve been devastated by the severest and deadliest drought in history – that of our profound awareness of the futility of all effort and the vanity of all plans.
Fernando Pessoa
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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.
Fernando Pessoa
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My boredom with everything has numbed me.
Fernando Pessoa
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You breathe better when you're rich.
Fernando Pessoa
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There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.
Fernando Pessoa
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As we wash our body so we should wash destiny, change life as we change clothes.
Fernando Pessoa