We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin. ― Fernando Pessoa
Death is a bend in the road, / To die is to slip out of view. — Fernando Pessoa, “23 May 1932,” A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe. (Penguin Classics, April 4, 2006)
I know, I alone How much it hurts, this heart With no faith nor law Nor melody nor thought. Only I, only I And none of this can I say Because feeling is like the sky – Seen, nothing in it to see. – Fernando Pessoa, “I Know, I Alone,” Selected Poems. (Grove Press April… Continue reading Fernando Pessoa
One never returns to the same place / therefore, when the child left the marigold field behind / he looked back several times. — Isabel Aguiar Barcelos, “One never returns to the same place,” trans. Ana Hudson, Nunca se Regressa ao Mesmo Lugar (Quasi Editions, 2003)
A gladness in the air feels almost too cool against the skin. The day is ending not in grey but in pale blue. A hazy blue is even reflecting off the stones of the street. It hurts to live, but the pain is remote. Feeling doesn’t matter. — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet. (Penguin… Continue reading Fernando Pessoa
I am not interested in being original. I am interested in being true. ― Agostinho da Silva
The heart, if it could think it would stop beating. — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet. (Penguin Modern Classics, 2002)
The human soul is an abyss. ― Fernando Pessoa
I hear the wind blow, and I feel that it was worth being born just to hear the wind blow. — Fernando Pessoa, from “Discontinuous Poems,” trans. Edouard Roditi, Poetry (October 1955)
“I fashion thoughts from my memory of how she is when she talks to me, And in each thought she’s a variation on her likeness. To love is to think. And from thinking of her so much, I almost forget to feel. I don’t really know what I want, even from her, and she’s all… Continue reading Fernando Pessoa
