Fernando Pessoa: Trending quotes (page 12)

“Without madness what is man
more than the healthy beast,
corpse adjourned that procreates?”

“At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.”

“I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.”

“I am the escaped one,
After I was born
They locked me up inside me
But I left.
My soul seeks me,
Through hills and valley,
I hope my soul
Never finds me.”

“Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!”

“Whether or not they exist, we're slaves to the gods.”

“And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living.”

“But my sadness is comforting
Because it’s right and natural
And because it’s what the soul should feel
When it already thinks it exists
And the hand pick flowers
And the soul takes no notice.”

“Having never discovered qualities in myself that might attract someone else, I could never believe that anyone felt attracted to me.”

“But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living?”

“I Know, I Alone

I know, I alone
How much it hurts, this heart
With no faith nor law
Nor melody nor thought.

Only I, only I
And none of this can I say
Because feeling is like the sky -
Seen, nothing in it to see.”

“There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.”

“To be understood is to prostitute yourself.”

“The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”

“Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn't what we see but what we are.”

“I’m losing my taste for everything, including even my taste for finding everything tasteless.”

“I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.”

“The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.”

“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.”