Fernando Pessoa,
I’d woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist. — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics, 2002)
Category: Portuguese Culture
Fernando Pessoa
A breath of music or of a dream, of something that would make me almost feel, something that would make me not think. — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics, 2002)
Fernando Pessoa
We are two abysses—a well staring at the sky. — Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
We create what we don’t haveBecause we’re sorry it’s missing,And whatever we long to seeIs what we end up seeing. — Fernando Pessoa, from “[The beautiful, wondrous fable],” 9 June 1934, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, ed. & trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin Classics, 2006)
José Saramago
The worst pain … isn’t the pain you feel at the time, it’s the pain you feel later on when there’s nothing you can do about it, They say that time heals all wounds, But we never live long enough to test that theory … ― José Saramago, The Cave. (Mariner Books; Reprint edition October… Continue reading José Saramago
Fernando Pessoa
And my heart is a little larger than the entire universe. — Álvaro de Campos, from “[I got off the train],” 4 July 1934, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa, ed. & trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin Classics, 2006)
Fernando Pessoa
Lightly, lightly, very lightly,A wind passes very lightlyAnd goes away, always very lightly.And I don’t know what I thinkAnd I don’t want to know. — Fernando Pessoa,“The Keeper of the Flocks XIII,” The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa. (Shearsman Books October 1, 2007) Originally published September 20th 1957.
Fernando Pessoa
Cat who play on the streetAs if you were in bed,I envy your fateBecause I can´t even call it that. Good servant of fatal lawsThat rule over rocks and people,You have general instinctsAnd your only feelings are what you feel. You are happy because you´re like that,All the nothing you are is yoursI see myself… Continue reading Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
Fly, bird, fly away; teach me to disappear! — Fernando Pessoa, from “The Keeper Of Sheep,” Poems Of Fernando Pessoa, trans. Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown (City Lights, 1998)
Fernando Pessoa
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… Continue reading Fernando Pessoa
The Vale of Soul-Making 