Fernando Pessoa Quotes

Biography: Fernando Pessoa is known for being one of the most significant literar... more Biography: Fernando Pessoa is known for being one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century, particularly in Portuguese literature. Born in Lisbon in 1888, Pessoa was a prolific writer and poet who created numerous heteronyms, each with distinct biographies and writing styles. His major work, "The Book of Disquiet," remains a profound exploration of existential angst and inner life. less

"Love letters are laughable; leave them unwritten. ""I see things from a distance, never the meaning. ""I am, in large measure, the selfsame prose I write. ""Everything is inertia to sadness, not to happiness. ""Could it think, the heart would stop beating. ""Atop the highest mountains of truth, we are all snow blind. ""After looking into such issues, look at a flower. ""Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and since this spirit knows itself only through the senses it is to these that it turns whenever it has to test its own self-knowledge.""We never love anyone. We love only our idea of what someone is like. We love an idea of our own; in short, it is ourselves that we love.""My past is everything I failed to be.""I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion. Then I go out and look at the stars.""The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible, nostalgia for what never was, the desire for what could have been, regret over not being someone else, dissatisfaction with the world's existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.""Everything is worthwhile if the soul is not small.""To read is to dream with open eyes.""To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.""The whole world changes, but not you.""Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.""Wise is he who enjoys the show offered by the world.""I have no ambitions nor desires. To be poet is not my ambition, it's my way of being alone.""Life is whatever we make of it. The traveler is the journey. What we see isn't what we see but what we are."

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