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Favourite quotes (21448)

“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.”

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

“We are two abysses — a well staring at the sky.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 48
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Somos dois abismos — um poço fitando o céu.

“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.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

“We never love someone. We just love the idea we have of someone. It's a concept of ours - summing up, ourselves - that we love.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 125
Original: Nunca amamos niguém. Amamos, tão-somente, a ideia que fazemos de alguém. É a um conceito nosso — em suma, é a nós mesmos — que amamos.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

“I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises.
Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was,
I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat.
I was never convinced of what I believed in.
I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through.
Words were my only truth.
When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

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

“My past is everything I failed to be.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

O meu passado é tudo quanto não consegui ser.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 100

“No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it.”

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

Não há nenhuma ideia inteligente que possa ganhar aceitação geral sem ser misturada antes com um pouco de estupidez.
The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 104

“If you cannot live alone, you were born a slave.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Se te é impossível viver só, nasceste escravo.

“… And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., number 168
The Book of Disquiet

“Direct experience is the evasion, or hiding place of those devoid of imagination.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 163
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A experiência directa é o subterfúgio, ou o esconderijo, daqueles que são desprovidos de imaginação.

“Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.”

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

“I take with me the conscience of defeat as a victory banner.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 79
Original: Levo comigo a consciência da derrota como um pendão de vitória.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

“We adore perfection because we can't have it; it would disgust us if we had it. Perfect is inhuman, because human is imperfect.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 249
Original: Adoramos a perfeição, porque não a podemos ter; repugná-la-íamos, se a tivéssemos. O perfeito é o desumano, porque o humano é imperfeito.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

“To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

“If, after I die, they should want to write my biography,
There's nothing simpler.
I've just two dates—of my birth, and of my death.
In between the one thing and the other all the days are mine.”

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

Se, depois de eu morrer, quiserem escrever a minha biografia,
Não há nada mais simples.
Tem só duas datas—a da minha nascença e a da minha morte.
Entre uma e outra coisa todos os dias são meus.
Alberto Caeiro (heteronym), "Se, depois de eu morrer" (8 November 1915), trans. Jonathan Griffin.
Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

“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 book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

“To be great, be whole; don't exaggerate
Or leave out any part of you,
Be complete in each thing. Put all you are
Into the least of your acts.
So too in each lake, with its lofty life,
The whole moon shines.”

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

Para ser grande, sê inteiro: nada
Teu exagera ou exclui.
Sê todo em cada coisa. Põe quanto és
No mínimo que fazes.
Assim em cada lago a lua toda
Brilha, porque alta vive.
Ricardo Reis (heteronym), Ode (14 February 1933), in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)
Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

“I'm nothing,
I'll always be nothing.
I can't even wish to be something.
Aside from that, I've got all the world's dreams inside me.”

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

Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), Tabacaria ["The Tobacconist's" or "The Tobacco Shop"] (15 January 1928)
Variant translations:
I am nothing.
Never shall be anything.
Cannot will to be anything.
This apart, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
trans. Jonathan Griffin, in Selected Poems (Penguin Books, 1974), p. 111
I am not nothing.
I will never be nothing.
I cannot ever want to be nothing.
Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
In Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 649
I am nothing.
I shall never be anything.
I cannot even wish to be anything.
Apart from this, I have within me all the dreams of the world.
Variant: I am nothing.
I will never be anything.
I cannot wish to be anything.
Bar that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.