Quote

We almost always live outside ourselves, and life itself is a continual dispersion. But it's towards ourselves that we tend, as towards a centre around which, like planets, we trace absurd and distant ellipses.

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
Around
Centre
Live
Absurd
Always
Chaos
Life
Towards
Ellipses
Like
Tend
Dispersion
Planets
Continual
Outside
Trace
Almost
Distant

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

Image
As we wash our body so we should wash destiny, change life as we change clothes.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
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
Image
When I write, I solemnly visit myself.
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
I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Everything is absurd.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
To think is to destroy. The very process of thought indicates it for the same thought, as thinking is decomposing.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly.
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
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
Image
It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
There's a non-existent peace in the uncertain quietness
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Wasting time has an esthetics to it.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Action men are the unvoluntary slaves of wise men.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
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
Image
The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people!
Fernando Pessoa