Fernando Pessoa quotes - page 8

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)
The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I'd languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me! View quote
Fernando Pessoa
Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living? View quote
Fernando Pessoa
Should I be what I think? But I think about being so many things! View quote
Fernando Pessoa
I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else. (Fernando Pessoa)
To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
As I walk, I construct perfect sentences that I cannot remember later at home. I don't know if the ineffable poetry of those sentences derived from what they were or from their never having been (written). View quote
Fernando Pessoa
I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
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. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
Lord, may the pain be ours, And the weakness that it brings, But at least give us the strength, Of not showing it to anyone! View quote
Fernando Pessoa
Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating. (Fernando Pessoa)
I know nothing and my heart aches. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
...the painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones; the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
And I have the others in me. Even when I'm far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I'm all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. View quote
Fernando Pessoa