Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Se te é impossível viver só, nasceste escravo.
“Freedom is the possibility of isolation… If you can't live alone, you were born a slave.”
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher
A liberdade é a possibilidade do isolamento... Se te é impossível viver só, nasceste escravo.
The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 283
“Youthfulness is about how you live not when you were born.”
Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer
“Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
“You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die.”
Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer
There's No Such Place As Far Away (1978)
Context: You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.
Howard Gardner (1943) American developmental psychologist
Howard Gardner, "The Ethical Mind," in: Harvard Business Review, March 2007.
“Consider your origin;
you were not born to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
Dante Alighieri book Inferno
Canto XXVI, lines 118–120.
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno
Hồ Xuân Hương (1772–1822) Vietnamese poet
As quoted in Vietnam Past and Present: The North, ed. Andrew Forbes and David Henley (Cognoscenti Books, 2012)
