Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French...
NationalityPortuguese
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth13 June 1888
CityLisbon, Portugal
CountryPortugal
The abstract intelligence produces a fatigue that's the worst of all fatigues. It doesn't weigh on us like bodily fatigue, nor disconcert like the fatigue of emotional experience. It's the weight of our consciousness of the world, a shortness of breath in our soul.
There are those that even God exploits, and they are prophets and saints in the vacuousness of the world.
This world is for those who are born to conquer it, Not for those who dream that are able to conquer it, even if they're right.
I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
The world belongs to who doesn't feel. The primary condition to be a practical man is the absence of sensitivity.
I pass times, I pass silences, formless worlds pass me by.
Literature exists because the world isn't enough.
Wise is he who enjoys the show offered by the world.
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.
Whoever, when he dies, leaves on paper a beautiful line of poetry has left the heavens richer and the earth too.
At first, it's unfamiliar, then it strikes root.
All is worthwhile if the soul is not small.
Contradiction is the essence of the universe.
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 about what's true and are wrong about what we conclude is right. And this man, who in a flash sees the universe naked, creates a philosophy or dreams up a religion; and the philosophy spreads and the religion propagates, and those who believe in the philosophy begin to wear it as a suit they don't see, and those who believe in the religion put it on as a mask they soon forget.