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I want to be a work of art, at least in my soul, since I can’t be one in my body.

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
Least
Since
Art
Body
Soul
Work

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

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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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The supreme empire is that of the Emperor who renounces all normal life, that of other men, and in who the care of supremacy doesn't weigh like a load of jewels.
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pg 9, The consciousness of life's unconsciousness is the oldest tax levied on the intelligence.
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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I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.
Fernando Pessoa
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If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.
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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I seek and don’t find myself. I belong to chrysanthemum hours, neatly lined up in flowerpots.
Fernando Pessoa
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Action men are the unvoluntary slaves of wise men.
Fernando Pessoa
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I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory.
Fernando Pessoa
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To live strikes me as a metaphysical mistake of matter, a dereliction of inaction.
Fernando Pessoa
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Art lies because it's social.
Fernando Pessoa
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Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.
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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Wise is he who enjoys the show offered by the world.
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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...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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I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.
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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I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.
Fernando Pessoa