Fernando Pessoa

There's no regret more painful than the regret of things that never were.

— Fernando Pessoa

My soul's the present shadow of a presence gone.

— Fernando Pessoa

Faithful to the word given and the idea had.

— Fernando Pessoa

I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.

— Fernando Pessoa

“Each drop of rain is my failed life weeping in nature.”

— Fernando Pessoa

Liberty is the possibility of isolation.

— Fernando Pessoa

I never go to where's a risk. I'm frightened of dangers down to boredom.

— Fernando Pessoa

God wills, man dreams, the work is born.

— Fernando Pessoa

Between me and life is a faint glass. No matter how sharply I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.

— Fernando Pessoa

The poet is a pretender. / He pretends so completely, / that he even pretends that it is pain / the pain he really feels.

— Fernando Pessoa

“Caesar gave the ultimate definition of ambition when he said: ‘Better to be the chief of a village than a subaltern in…

— Fernando Pessoa

To think is to destroy. The very process of thought indicates it for the same thought, as thinking is decomposing.

— Fernando Pessoa

“Tener opiniones es estar vendido a uno mismo. No tener opiniones es existir. Tener todas las opiniones es ser poeta.”

— Fernando Pessoa

“What grieves me is that my best is no good, and that another whom I dream of, if he existed, would have…

— Fernando Pessoa

“back home.. the tablecloth of civilization makes us forget the already painted pine it covers! ([50], Zenith trans.)”

— Fernando Pessoa

I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has…

— Fernando Pessoa

“I’ve always felt that virtue lies in obtaining what is out of one’s reach, in living where one isn’t, in being more…

— Fernando Pessoa

“I believe in the world as in a daisy, Because I see it. But I don’t think about it, Because to think…

— Fernando Pessoa

“By day they’re full of meaningless activity; by night they’re full of a meaningless lack of it.By day I am nothing, and…

— Fernando Pessoa

I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream…

— Fernando Pessoa

To be great, be whole; Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you. Be whole in everything. Put all you are Into…

— Fernando Pessoa

“It was just a moment, and I saw myself. I can no longer even say what I was. And now I’m sleepy,…

— Fernando Pessoa

“I try to say what I feel Without thinking about what I feel. I try to place words right next to my…

— Fernando Pessoa

“All that we truly possess are our own sensations; it is in them, rather than in what they sense, that we must…

— Fernando Pessoa

“Atravesso os teus versos como a uma multidão aos encontrões a mim,
E cheira-me a suor, a óleos, a atividade humana e mecânica.
Nos…

— Fernando Pessoa

“I’m certain, but my certainty is a lie. To be certain is to not be seeing. The day after tomorrow doesn’t exist.…

— Fernando Pessoa

“enjoying a tranquillity in which I won’t write the works I don’t write now, and to keep on not writing them I’ll…

— Fernando Pessoa

“All that I've done, thought or been is a series of submissions, either to a false self that I assumed belonged to…

— Fernando Pessoa

“Life is what we conceive it to be. For the farmer who considers his field to be everything, the field is an…

— Fernando Pessoa

“If men knew how to meditate on the mystery of life, if they knew how to feel the thousand complexities which spy…

— Fernando Pessoa

“Und so schleppe ich mein Leben damit hin, das zu tun, was ich nicht will, und das zu erträumen, was ich nicht…

— Fernando Pessoa

“I have to choose what I detest - either dreaming which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action,…

— Fernando Pessoa

Solitude desolates me; company oppresses me.

— Fernando Pessoa

“But oh how many Caesars I have been!”

— Fernando Pessoa

“I don't have enough money to be a dreamer.”

— Fernando Pessoa

Writing is like paying myself a formal visit…

— Fernando Pessoa

“no nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed!”

— Fernando Pessoa

Strength without agility is a mere mass.

— Fernando Pessoa

“Sleep is fusion with God, Nirvana, however it be called.”

— Fernando Pessoa

“My dreams are a stupid shelter, like an umbrella against lightning.”

— Fernando Pessoa