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Fernando Pessoa Quotes
1888–1935 Portugal
Fernando Pessoa (13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet and writer, most of whose work was published posthumously. He wrote frequently under heteronyms, alter egos with developed personalities, biographies, jobs, habits, attitudes, addresses, etc., who sometimes quoted and interacted with each other and other people.
Also known as: Pessoa, Pessoa, Fernando
Random Fernando Pessoa quote
189 quotes
Wasting time has an esthetics to it.
What is art but the denial of life?
Property isn't theft: it's nothing.
I never meant to be but a dreamer.
The sea is fulfilled, and the Empire fell apart. Lord, Portugal must yet fulfill itself!
Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.
Yet I have no stylistic nobility. My head aches because my head aches. The universe aches me because my head aches.
I'm upset by the happiness of all these men who don't know they're unhappy. [...] Because of that, though, I love them all. Dear vegetables!
What, I believe, produces in me the deep feeling, in which I live, of incongruity with others, is that most think with sensitivity, while I feel with thought.
You breathe better when you're rich.
I don't believe in the landscape.
At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.
The Gods sell when they give. Glory is paid for with disgrace. Poor are the happy, for they are Just what passes.
My life is as if you've hit me with it.
And the supreme glory of all this, my love, is to think that maybe this isn't true, neither may I believe it true. And when lying starts giving us pleasure, let's speak the truth so that we lie to it.
A sort of anteneurosis of what I will be when I will not longer be freezes my body and soul. A kind of remembrance of my future death makes me shudder from the inside.
Be plural, like the universe!
My God, my God, who am I attending to? How many am I? Who is me? What is this interval between me and me?
Clear in thinking, and clear in feeling, and clear in wanting
When I write, I solemnly visit myself.
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