Quotes by
Fernando Pessoa |
1888-1935 , Portuguese poet & writer
He was one of the greatest Portuguese poets and writers of the 20th century. Most of his work was published posthumously. He wrote frequently under heteronyms, alter egos with developed personalities, biographies, jobs, habits, attitudes, addresses, etc. | 42 quotes | 5,270 visits |
Quotations
| • | If you cannot live alone, you were born a slave. 15 |
| • | No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it. 12 |
| • | Solitude desolates me; company oppresses me. 8 |
| • | Deceiving himself well is the first quality of the statesman. 7 |
| • | There's no regret more painful than the regret of things that never were. 7 |
| • | I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me. 5 |
| • | My past is everything I failed to be. 5 |
| • | But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living? 5 |
| • | Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions. 5 |
| • | 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. 4 |
| • | Every gesture is a revolutionary act. 4 |
| • | Art consists in making others feel what we feel. 4 |
| • | Action men are the involuntary slaves of wise men. 4 |
| • | To be understood is to prostitute yourself. 4 |
| • | To write is to forget. Literature is the pleasantest way of ignoring life. 4 |
| • | I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else. 3 |
| • | There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist. 3 |
| • | I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided. 3 |
| • | Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. 3 |
| • | It's in an inland sea that the river of my life ended. 3 |
| • | We adore perfection because we can't have it; it would disgust us if we had it. Perfect is inhuman, because human is imperfect. 3 |
| • | It's been a long time since I've been me. 3 |
| • | The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart. 2 |
| • | What would happen to the world if we were human? 2 |
| • | Enthusiasm is rude. 2 |
| • | What is art but the denial of life? 2 |
| • | What's most worthless about dreams is that everybody has them. 2 |
| • | My life is as if you've hit me with it. 2 |
| • | It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living. 2 |
| • | All beginnings are involuntary. 2 |
| • | Myth is the nothing that is everything. 2 |
| • | Could it think, the heart would stop beating. 2 |
| • | It's love that is inescapable. Sex is the merest accident. 2 |
| • | Every man who deserves to be famous knows it is not worth the trouble. 2 |
| • | Writing is like paying myself a formal visit 2 |
| • | Property is not theft. It is nothing. 2 |
Quotes in Verse
| • | I am nothing. I'll never be anything. I couldn't want to be something. Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams in the world. 5 |
| • | We are two abysses — a well staring at the sky. 4 |
| • | God gave the sea the danger and the abyss, but it was in it that He mirrored the sky. 4 |
| • | I have no ambitions nor desires To be a poet is not my ambition, It's simply my way of being alone. 4 |
| • | Not pleasure, not glory, not power: freedom, only freedom. 3 |
| • | God wills, man dreams, the work is born. 3 |
