„I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.“
— Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet
Source: The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa quotes
289 55
Fernando Pessoa
Birthdate: 13. June 1888
Date of death: 30. November 1935
Other names: Ֆերնանտո Բեսոա, Ferdinando Pessoa
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French.
Pessoa was a prolific writer, and not only under his own name, for he created approximately seventy-five others. He did not call them all pseudonyms because he felt that some did not capture their true independent intellectual life and instead called them heteronyms. These imaginary figures sometimes held unpopular or extreme views. Wikipedia
Works
Quotes Fernando Pessoa
„All problems are unsolvable. The essence of the existence of a problem is that there is no solution. Looking for a fact means there is no fact. To think is not to know how to be.“
— Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet
Ibid., p. 123
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Todos os problemas são insolúveis. A essência de haver um problema é não haver solução. Procurar um facto significa não haver um facto. Pensar é não saber existir.
„In order to understand, I destroyed myself.“
— Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet
A Factless Autobiography, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p. 73
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Para compreender, destruí-me.
„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'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
„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.“
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
„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
„Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.“
— Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet
A literatura é a maneira mais agradável de ignorar a vida.
Variant: To write is to forget. Literature is the pleasantest way of ignoring life.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 116
„I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect.“
— Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet
Repudiei sempre que me compreendessem. Ser compreendido é prostituir-se. Prefiro ser tomado a sério como o que não sou, ignorado humanamente, com decência e naturalidade.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 128
„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 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.
„Eat your chocolates, little girl,
Eat your chocolates!
Believe me, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates,
And all religions put together teach no more than the candy shop.
Eat, dirty little girl, eat!
If only I could eat chocolates with the same truth as you!
But I think and, removing the silver paper that's tinfoil,
I throw it all on the ground, as I've thrown out life.“
Come chocolates, pequena;
Come chocolates!
Olha que não há mais metafísica no mundo senão chocolates.
Olha que as religiões todas não ensinam mais que a confeitaria.
Come, pequena suja, come!
Pudesse eu comer chocolates com a mesma verdade com que comes!
Mas eu penso e, ao tirar o papel de prata, que é de folhas de estanho,
Deito tudo para o chão, como tenho deitado a vida.
Tabacaria (1928), trans. Richard Zenith
„The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world's existence. All these half-tones of the soul's consciousness create a raw landscape within us, a sun eternally setting on what we are.“
Os sentimentos que mais doem, as emoções que mais pungem, são os que são absurdos – a ânsia de coisas impossíveis, precisamente porque são impossíveis, a saudade do que nunca houve, o desejo do que poderia ter sido, a mágoa de não ser outro, a insatisfação da existência do mundo. Todos estes meios tons da consciencia da alma criam em nós uma paisagem dolorida, um eterno sol-pôr do que somos.
The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 196
„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.
