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My soul's the present shadow of a presence gone.
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
Soul
Presence
Shadow
Present
Gone
More quotes by Fernando Pessoa
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
I take with me the conscience of defeat as a victory banner.
Fernando Pessoa
I want to be a work of art, at least in my soul, since I can’t be one in my body.
Fernando Pessoa
But I am not perfect in my way of putting things Because I lack the divine simplicity Of being only what I appear to be.
Fernando Pessoa
To think is to destroy. The very process of thought indicates it for the same thought, as thinking is decomposing.
Fernando Pessoa
Whether or not they exist we are slaves to our gods.
Fernando Pessoa
Nature is the difference between the soul and God.
Fernando Pessoa
Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.
Fernando Pessoa
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
I think of life as an inn where I have to stay until the abyss coach arrives. I don't know where it will take me, for I know nothing.
Fernando Pessoa
There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street.
Fernando Pessoa
Literature exists because the world isn't enough.
Fernando Pessoa
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
Life is whatever we conceive it to be.
Fernando Pessoa
My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while.
Fernando Pessoa
I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.
Fernando Pessoa
I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.
Fernando Pessoa
The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own
Fernando Pessoa
I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.
Fernando Pessoa
Yes, talking to people makes me sleepy.
Fernando Pessoa
