Fernando Pessoa Quotes

263 quotes in 2844 categories

• Every spoken word double-crosses us. The only tolerable form of communication is the written word, since it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls…
• On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. Reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's…
• If life has given us no more than a prison cell, let's at least decorate it as best we can-with the shadows of our dreams,…
• One or another man, liberated or cursed, suddenly sees-but even this man sees rarely-that all we are is what we aren't, that we fool ourselves…
• Could it think, the heart would stop beating.
• All beginnings are involuntary.
• The Gods sell when they give. Glory is paid for with disgrace. Poor are the happy, for they are Just what passes.
• Everything is worthwhile if the soul is not small.
• The sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese.
• I think of life as an inn where I have to stay until the abyss coach arrives. I don't know where it will take me,…
• Every day things happen in the world that cannot be explained by any law of things we know. Every day they're mentioned and forgotten, and…
• I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.
• I believe that saying a thing is to keep its virtues and take away its terror.
• There's a tiredness of abstract inteligence, and it's the most horrible of tirednesses. It doesn't weight on you like the tiredness of the body, nor…
• The idea of any social obligation [...] just the idea of it embarasses my thoughts for a day, and sometimes it's since the day before…
• The beauty of a naked body is felt only by the dressed races.
• It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living.
• I take with me the conscience of defeat as a victory banner.
• My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
• Between me and life is a faint glass. No matter how sharply I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.

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