Quotes from book
The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa Original title Livro do Desassossego , Composto por Bernardo Soares, ajudante de guarda‐livros na cidade de Lisboa (Portuguese, 1982)

The Book of Disquiet is a work by the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa . Published posthumously, The Book of Disquiet is a fragmentary lifetime project, left unedited by the author, who introduced it as a "factless autobiography."

Fernando Pessoa photo

“My past is everything I failed to be.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

O meu passado é tudo quanto não consegui ser.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 100

Fernando Pessoa photo

“If you cannot live alone, you were born a slave.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Se te é impossível viver só, nasceste escravo.

Fernando Pessoa photo

“… And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., number 168
The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa photo

“Direct experience is the evasion, or hiding place of those devoid of imagination.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 163
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A experiência directa é o subterfúgio, ou o esconderijo, daqueles que são desprovidos de imaginação.

Fernando Pessoa photo

“I take with me the conscience of defeat as a victory banner.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 79
Original: Levo comigo a consciência da derrota como um pendão de vitória.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa photo

“We adore perfection because we can't have it; it would disgust us if we had it. Perfect is inhuman, because human is imperfect.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 249
Original: Adoramos a perfeição, porque não a podemos ter; repugná-la-íamos, se a tivéssemos. O perfeito é o desumano, porque o humano é imperfeito.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa photo

“If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa photo

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa photo

“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa photo

“I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa photo

“I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Repudiei sempre que me compreendessem. Ser compreendido é prostituir-se. Prefiro ser tomado a sério como o que não sou, ignorado humanamente, com decência e naturalidade.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 128

Fernando Pessoa photo

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet