Fernando Pessoa: Trending quotes (page 3)

“I have no ambitions nor desires.
To be a poet is not my ambition,
It's simply my way of being alone.”

Fernando Pessoa

Não tenho ambições nem desejos
Ser poeta não é uma ambição minha
É a minha maneira de estar sozinho.
Alberto Caeiro (heteronym), O Guardador de Rebanhos ("The Keeper of Herds", tr. Richard Zenith) in Athena (January 1925)

Way

“And as well as I dream, I reason if I want, for that's just another kind of dream.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 320
The Book of Disquiet
Original: E assim como sonho, raciocino se quiser, porque isso é apenas uma outra espécia de sonho.

Dreams

“I will necessarily say what it seems to me, given that I'm me.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 162
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Hei-de por força dizer o que me parece, visto que sou eu.

“I don't believe in the landscape.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 286
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Não acredito na paisagem.

“Attention to detail and a perfectionist instinct, far from stimulating action, are character qualities that lead to renunciation. Better to dream than to be.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid.
The Education of the Stoic

Dreams

“What's most worthless about dreams is that everybody has them.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 145
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O que há de mais reles nos sonhos é que todos os têm.

Dreams

“You breathe better when you're rich.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 95
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Respira-se melhor quando se é rico.

“They were two and beautiful and wanted to be something else; love delayed itself to them in the tedium of the future, and regret of what would happen to be was already being the daughter of the love they hadn't had.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 288
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Eram dois e belos e desejavam ser outra coisa; o amor tardava-lhes no tédio do futuro, e a saudade do que haveria de ser vinha já sendo filha do amor que não tinham tido.

Love , Beauty , Future , Daughters

“I say it because I don't believe.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Digo-o porque não acredito.

“Liberty is the possibility of isolation.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 246
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A liberdade é a possibilidade do isolamento.

“The sea is fulfilled, and the Empire fell apart.
Lord, Portugal must yet fulfill itself!”

Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem

Poem "O Infante", verses 11-12
Message
Original: Cumpriu-se o Mar, e o Império se desfez.
Senhor, falta cumprir-se Portugal!

Sea

“I'm beginning to know myself. I don't exist.
I'm the gap between what I'd like to be and what others have made me.”

Fernando Pessoa

Começo a conhecer-me. Não existo.
Sou o intervalo entre o que desejo ser e os outros me fizeram.
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), "Começo a conhecer-me. Não existo.", in Fernando Pessoa & Co: Selected Poems, trans. Richard Zenith (Grove Press, 1998)

“I belong to a generation - assuming that this generation includes others besides me - that lost its faith in the gods of the old religions as well as in the gods of modern nonreligions. I reject Jehova as I reject humanity.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid., p. 14
The Education of the Stoic

God , Faith , Religion

“These pages are not my confession; they’re my definition. And I feel, as I begin to write it, that I can write it with some semblance of truth.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid.
The Education of the Stoic

Truth , Feeling

“To think is to destroy. The very process of thought indicates it for the same thought, as thinking is decomposing.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Pensar é destruir. O próprio processo do pensamento o indica para o mesmo pensamento, porque pensar é decompor.

Thinking

“Art lies because it's social.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 232
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A arte mente porque é social

Art

“My homeland is the portuguese language.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 230
Translation variants:
My fatherland is the Portuguese language.
My nation is the Portuguese language.
My country is the Portuguese language.
My home is the Portuguese language.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Minha Pátria é a língua portuguesa.

“Pity him who lives at home
Happy with his life,
Without a dream, a flexing of wings,
To make him relinquish
Even the warmest ember of his hearth!

Pity him who is happy!
He lives because life lasts.
Nothing within him whispers
More than the primeval law:
That life leads to the grave.”

Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem

<p>Original: Triste de quem vive em casa,
Contente com o seu lar,
Sem que um sonho, no erguer de asa,
Faça até mais rubra a brasa
Da lareira a abandonar!</p><p>Triste de quem é feliz!
Vive porque a vida dura.
Nada na alma lhe diz
Mais que a lição da raiz-
Ter por vida a sepultura.</p>
Poem "O Quinto Império" http://www.inverso.pt/Mensagem/Encoberto/QuintoImperio.htm, lines 1–10
Message

Life , Law , Dreams , Home

“I never was but an isolated bon vivant, which is absurd; or a mystic bon vivant, which is an impossible thing.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 271
a possible play on Tertullian's: "credo quia absurdum" (I believe because it's absurd), "credo quia impossibilis est" (I believe because it's impossible).
Richard Zenith translates boémio as bohemian, not bon vivant.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Nunca fui mais que um boémio isolado, o que é um absurdo; ou um boémio místico, o que é uma coisa impossível.

“Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid., p. 18.
The Education of the Stoic

Life , Problem , Thinking , Forgetting