xy

“The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

“I crave time in all its duration, and I
want to be myself unconditionally.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“Ah! The anguish, the vile rage, the despair
Of not being able to express
With a shout, an extreme and bitter shout,
The bleeding of my heart.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“To feel today what one felt yesterday isn't to feel - it's to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be today's living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

“Give me some more wine, because life is nothing.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“There's something vile (and all the more vile because ridiculous) in the tendency of feeble men to make universal tragedies out of the sad comedies of their private woes.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“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 book The Book of Disquiet

“To act—that is true wisdom. I can be what I want to be, but I have to want whatever it is. Success consists in being successful, not in having the potential for success.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

“Eternal tourists of ourselves, there is no landscape but what we are. We possess nothing, for we don’t even possess ourselves. We have nothing because we are nothing. What hand will I reach out, and to what universe? The universe isn’t mine: it’s me.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

“pg.9 "In my heart there's a peaceful anguish, and my calm is made of resignation.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

“Everything I sought in life I abandoned for the sake of the search. I'm like one who absentmindedly looks for he doesn't know what, having forgotten it in his dreaming as the search got under way.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

“I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

“Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

“THIRD WATCHER Let her speak. Don't interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her… I'm falling asleep in order to hear her… Go on, sister, go on… My heart aches because I wasn't you when you dreamed at the seashore…”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“Again I see you, But me I don't see!, The magical mirror in which I saw myself has been broken, And only a piece of me I see in each fatal fragment - Only a piece of you and me!…”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“Everything is theater.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet