Fernando Pessoa citations

Page 2

“Je me suis multiplié pour me sentir, Pour me sentir, j'ai eu besoin de tout ressentir; J'ai débordé, j'ai fini par me répandre”

“J’ai eu envie un jour de faire une blague à Sá-Carneiro – inventer un poète bucolique, de l’espèce compliquée, et le lui présenter, je ne sais plus comment, d’une façon plausible quelconque – Je passais quelques jours à tenter d’élaborer le poète mais je ne parvins à rien. Un jour où j'avais finalement renoncé — c'était le 8 mars 1914 — je m'approchai d'une haute commode et, prenant une feuille de papier, je me mis à écrire, debout, comme je le fais chaque fois que je peux. Et j'ai écrit trente et quelques poèmes d'affilée, dans une sorte d'extase dont je ne saurai saisir la nature. Ce fut le jour triomphal de ma vie et je ne pourrai en connaître d'autres comme celui-là. Je débutai par un titre : Le Gardeur de troupeaux.”

“Oh, quelle horreur, quelle horreur intime dénoue la voix de notre âme et les sensations de nos pensées et nous fait parler et sentir et penser quand tout en nous demande le silence et le jour et l’inconscience de la vie”

“Il n'est pas suffisant de ne pas être aveugle pour voir les arbres et les fleurs. Il faut aussi n'avoir aucune philosophie. Quand il y a philosophie, il n'y a pas d'arbres: il y a des idées, sans plus”

“Ma vie tourne autour de mon œuvre littéraire - qu’elle soit, ou puisse être, bonne ou mauvaise. Tout le reste, dans la vie, n’a qu’un intérêt secondaire”

“L'abîme est ma clôture, être moi n'a pas de mesure”

“Substitue-toi à Dieu sans vergogne. C’est la seule attitude réellement religieuse. (Dieu est partout sauf en lui-même).”

“La mer est la religion de la Nature”

“Surviens toi à toi même.”

“Nous sommes aussi grands que nos rêves.”

“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.”

“To love is to tire of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves. (It is exceedingly important that we not love.)”

“This world is for those who are born to conquer it, Not for those who dream that are able to conquer it, even if they're right.”

“We, all who live, have
A life that is lived
And another life that is thought,
And the only life we have
It's the one that is divided
In right or wrong.”

“I know not what tomorrow will bring”

“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.”

“I think of life as an inn where I have to stay until the abyss coach arrives. I don't know where it will take me, for I know nothing.”

“All pleasure is a vice, for seeking pleasure is what everybody does in life, and the only dark vice is doing what everybody does.”

“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.”

“What we see is not what we see but what we are.”

“Everything is worthwhile
if the soul is not small.”

“I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.”

“I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.”

“Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.”

“To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.”

“I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.”

“We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.”

“Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“To be understood is to prostitute yourself.”

“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.”

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

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