Quote

On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. Reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there's something understandable.

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
Without
Road
Something
Understood
Presupposes
Since
Inns
Faith
Understandable
Understand
Halfway
Stills
Stands
Still
Philosophical
Reason
Criticism

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

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To choose ways of not acting was ever the concern and scruple of my life.
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I've reached the point where tedium is a person, the incarnate fiction of my own company.
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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.
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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To be great, be whole Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you. Be whole in everything. Put all you are Into the smallest thing you do. So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor Because it blooms up above.
Fernando Pessoa
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The end of lower art is to please, the end of average art is to raise the top, the end of superior art is to free.
Fernando Pessoa
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I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.
Fernando Pessoa
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Literature exists because the world isn't enough.
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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What can I expect from myself? My sensation in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling. A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained. A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child. From, The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa
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I Know, I Alone I know, I alone How much it hurts, this heart With no faith nor law Nor melody nor thought. Only I, only I And none of this can I say Because feeling is like the sky - Seen, nothing in it to see.
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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Solitude desolates me company oppresses me.
Fernando Pessoa
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I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.
Fernando Pessoa
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I never had anyone I could call “Master”. No Christ died for me. No Buddha showed me the right path. In the depths of my dreams no Apollo or Athena appeared to me to enlighten my soul
Fernando Pessoa
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There is a time when it is necessary to abandon the used clothes, which already have the shape of our body and to forget our paths, which takes us always to the same places. This is the time to cross the river: and if we don't dare to do it, we will have stayed, forever beneath ourselves
Fernando Pessoa
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Action men are the unvoluntary slaves of wise men.
Fernando Pessoa
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Nobody appropriates novelties as readily as the Portuguese.
Fernando Pessoa
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Everyone has his vanity, and each one's vanity is his forgetting that there are others with an equal soul.
Fernando Pessoa
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Everything is absurd.
Fernando Pessoa