“I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.”

—  Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays." by Fernando Pessoa?
Fernando Pessoa photo
Fernando Pessoa288
Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publi… 1888–1935

Related quotes

Jane Roberts photo

“Joseph was correct when he spoke of entities creating stages upon which to act out their problems. The point is that once the play begins, the actors are so completely engrossed in their roles that they forget that they themselves wrote the play, constructed the sets or are even acting. The reason is rather apparent: If you know that a situation is 'imaginary,' you are not going to come to grips with it.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 184, quoting from Seth Session 31

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo

“Phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on the ground of development. We have already seen that various leading animal forms represent stages in the embryotic progress of the highest—the human being. Our brain goes through the various stages of a fish's, a reptile's, and a mammifer's brain, and finally becomes human.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 306

Ambrose Bierce photo

“Gallows, n. A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which the leading actor is translated to heaven. ”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt photo

“Life is a play acted by dying men,
Where, if its heroes seem to foot it well
And go light-tongued without grimace of pain,
Death will be found anon. And who shall tell
Which part was saddest, or in youth or age,
When the tired actor stops and leaves the stage?”

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922) English poet and writer

'Esther, A Young Man's Tragedy" (1892), Sonnet II http://www.sonnets.org/esther.htm

Giovanni Morassutti photo

“There is also a therapeutic component in the Organic Creative Process: with the exploration of the various characters, the actor develops the knowledge of himself, even through suffering.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

From the essay Strasberg Legacy

“At various stages of evolution, the Indian cultures were presented with only a limited number of possibilities. The members of certain kinds of societies”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: At various stages of evolution, the Indian cultures were presented with only a limited number of possibilities. The members of certain kinds of societies—the small band, the large band, the tribe, the chiefdom, the state, and variations of these—tended to make characteristic choices concerning religion, law, government, and art... Such choices were not... consciously made... For a particular society, they either worked or they did not work.<!-- p. 212

Richard Summerbell photo

“Unnatural act (definition): Any everyday act not equally typical of cattle, sheep, and horses. Singing, smoking, and various heterosexual and homosexual acts are included.”

Richard Summerbell (1956) Canadian mycologist

Abnormally Happy: A Gay Dictionary (1985)

Whoopi Goldberg photo

“Actresses can only play women. I'm an actor, I can play anything.”

Whoopi Goldberg (1955) American actress

Speaking on The Today Show on January 13, 1986; as quoted in Whoopi Goldberg on Stage and Screen https://www.google.com/books/edition/Whoopi_Goldberg_on_Stage_and_Screen/WTH-SHM1LrkC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;bsq=%22an%20actress%20can%20only%20play%20a%20woman%22 (2013) by Lisa Pertillar Brevard, p. 18.

“This paucity of actors on the stage reflects the liturgical roots of Greek theater, which continued to stick close to its religious origins. … [A] machine, called the mēchanē, was a sort of crane that swung an actor playing a god over the parapet of the skēnē and out above the stage (thus the Latin phrase deus ex machina for a solution from nowhere, an unforeseen answer to prayers).”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.IV The Politician and the Playwright: How to Rule

Vera Stanley Alder photo

“Various classes of doctors and healers somewhat to look down upon each other and ignore respective merit. This habit must be superseded, of course, by co-operation, correlation and the growing understanding of the part that various types of healing play in their relation to one another...”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XXXV The Opportunity Today

Related topics