Fernando Pessoa

“We live by action—by acting on desire. Those of us who don't know how to want—whether geniuses or beggars—are related by impotence.”

“Life is whatever we conceive it to be.”

“I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.”

“I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.”

“Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.”

“I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory.”

“I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.”

“To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.”

“I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.”

“Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!”

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”

“I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.”

“Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't wish to be, and don't even wish to be taken for being.Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us. [23](Zenith trans.)”

“Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!”

“There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.”

“There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.”

“Io mi siedo sulla soglia e immergo il mio sguardo e il mio udito nei colori e nei suoni del paesaggio e canto piano piano, per me soltanto, dei vaghi canti che compongo nell'attesa.”

“What happens to us either happens to everyone or only to us: in the first instance it's banal; in the second it's incomprehensible.”

“In order to understand, I destroyed myself.”

“Isto está tudo decadente: já nem decadentes há.”

“The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”

“When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.”

“I am the suburb of a non-existent town, the prolix commentary on a book never written. I am nobody, nobody. I am a character in a novel which remains to be written, and I float, aerial, scattered without ever having been, among the dreams of a creature who did not know how to finish me off.”

“O resto é a vida que nos deixa, a chama que morre no nosso olhar, a púrpura gasta antes de a vestirmos, a lua que vela o nosso abandono, as estrelas que estendem o seu silêncio sobre a nossa hora de desengano. Assídua a mágoa estéril e amiga que nos aperta o peito com amor.(Meu destino é a decadência)”

“I read and am liberated. I acquire objectivity. I cease being myself and so scattered. And what I read, instead of being like a nearly invisible suit that sometimes oppresses me, is the external world’s tremendous and remarkable clarity, the sun that sees everyone, the moon that splotches the still earth with shadows, the wide expanses that end in the sea, the blackly solid trees whose tops greenly wave, the steady peace of ponds on farms, the terraced slopes with their paths overgrown by grape-vines.”

“Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.”

“Pasmo sempre quando acabo qualquer coisa. Pasmo e desolo-me. O meu instinto de perfeição deveria inibir-me de acabar; deveria inibir-me até de dar começo. Mas distraio-me e faço. O que consigo é um produto, em mim, não de uma aplicação de vontade, mas de uma cedência dela. Começo porque não tenho força para pensar; acabo porque não tenho alma para suspender. Este livro é a minha cobardia.”

“Life is whatever we make it. The traveller is the journey. What we see is not what we see but who we are. (76)”

“At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.”

“Para realizar um sonho é preciso esquecê-lo, distrair dele a atenção. Por isso realizar é não realizar.”

“Jutro ja również zniknę z ulicy Srebrnej, z ulicy Złotników, z ulicy Płócienników. Jutro ja również - dusza, która czuje i myśli, świat, którym jestem dla siebie - tak, jutro ja również będę tym, co przestał przemierzać te ulice, tym, którego przelotnie będę wspominać słowami "co się z nim stało?". I wszystko, co czuję, nie będzie niczym więcej jak tylko brakiem jednego przechodnia w codziennym życiu jakiegoś tam miasta.”

“Vivo sempre no presente. O futuro, não o conheço. O passado, já o não tenho.”

“Whether or not they exist we are slaves to our gods.”

“Eu que me aguente comigo e com os comigos de mim.”

“Izolacja przykroiła mnie na swój obraz i podobieństwo. Obecność drugiej osoby - jakiejkolwiek osoby - opóźnia natychmiast mój proces myślenia i podczas gdy normalnego człowieka kontakt z innymi pobudza do rozmowy i wyrażenia czegoś, na mnie ten kontakt działa paraliżująco, jeśli tak można rzec. Będąc sam, jestem zdolny wymyślić różne dowcipne powiedzenia, odpowiedzieć szybko na to, czego nikt nie powiedział, błysnąć inteligentną towarzyskością wobec nikogo. Ale to wszystko znika, gdy znajdę się w czyjejś obecności: znika inteligencja, nie potrafię mówić i po jakichś piętnastu minutach odczuwam jedynie senność. Tylko moi wyimaginowani i widmowi przyjaciele, tylko moje rozmowy prowadzone z nimi w marzeniach są dla mnie realne i znaczące, pobudzają mój umysł, który odbija się w nich niczym w lustrze.Ciąży mi zresztą wszelka myśl o zmuszaniu się do kontaktu z innymi. Zwykłe zaproszenie na obiad z przyjacielem budzi we mnie trudny do określenia niepokój. Myśl o jakimś obowiązku towarzyskim - pójściu na pogrzeb, rozmowie z kimś na jakiś temat w biurze, udaniu się na dworzec po kogoś, znanego czy nieznanego - sama ta myśl już mi zakłóca dzień, a niekiedy nawet w przeddzień już się trapię, źle śpię, gdy tymczasem samo zdarzenie nie ma żadnego znaczenia i nie usprawiedliwia niczego. I to zawsze się powtarza, nigdy nie mogę się tego oduczyć."Moje obyczaje skłaniają mnie ku samotności, a nie ku ludziom": nie wiem, czy to Rousseau, czy Senancour powiedział. Ale był to ktoś w moim rodzaju, choć chyba nie mogę powiedzieć, że z mojej rasy.”

“La generazione a cui appartengo ha trovato un mondo privo di certezze per chi possegga un cuore e un cervello. Il lavoro di distruzione delle generazioni precedenti aveva prodotto come risultato che il mondo nel quale nascemmo era privo per noi di sicurezza sul piano religioso, di sostegno sul piano morale, di stabilità sul piano politico.”

“May I at least carry, to the boundless possibility contained in the abyss of everything, the glory of my disillusion like that of a great dream, and the splendor of not believing like a banner of defeat; a banner in feeble hands, but still and all a banner, dragged through mud and the blood of the weak but raised high for who knows what reason - whether in defiance, or as a challenge, or in mere desperation - as we vanish into quicksand. No one knows for what reason, because no one knows anything, and the sand swallows those with banners as it swallows those without. And the sand covers everything: my life, my prose, my eternity. I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory.”

“Great mysteries inhabit the threshold of my being.”

“Temos, todos que vivemos,Uma vida que é vividaE outra vida que é pensada,E a única vida que temosÉ essa que é divididaEntre a verdadeira e a errada.”

“Like all who are impassioned, I take blissful delight in losing myself, in fully experiencing the thrill of surrender. And so I often write with no desire to think, in an externalized reverie, letting the words cuddle me like a baby in their arms. They form sentences with no meaning, flowing softly like water I can feel, a forgetful stream whose ripples mingle and undefine, becoming other, still other ripples, and still again other. Thus ideas and images, throbbing with expressiveness, pass through me in resounding processions of pale silks on which imagination shimmers like moonlight, dappled and indefinite.”

“Para ser grande, sê inteiro: nadaTeu exagera ou exclui.Sê todo em cada coisa. Põe quanto ésNo mínimo que fazes.Assim em cada lago a lua todaBrilha, porque alta vive.”

“Śmierć według mnie to zakręt drogi. Umrzeć - wymykać się spojrzeniu.Słucham i słyszę jak odchodzisz, Trwając jak ja przy swym istnieniu. Ziemia jest przecież z nieba cała.Kłamstwu wszak nikt nie uwił gniazda.Każdy tu kiedyś się odnalazłŚwiadom, że droga w krąg i prawda”

“Só o que sonhamos é o que verdadeiramente somos, porque o mais, por estar realizado, pertenece ao mundo e a toda a gente”

“Perhaps it's my destiny to remain a bookkeeper forever, and for poetry and literature to remain simply butterflies that alight on my head and underline my own ridiculousness by their very beauty. In the future I'll be living quietly in a little house somewhere, enjoying a peaceful existence not writing the book I'm not writing now and, so as to continue not doing so, I will use different excuses to the ones I use now to avoid actually confronting myself.”

“I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.”

“I feel love for all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love ... even though nothing truly merits the love of any soul, if, out of sentiment, we must give it, I might as well lavish it on the smallness of an inkwell as on the grand indifference of the stars.”

“La morte è la curva della stradaMorire è solo non essere visto.Se ascolto, sento i tuoi passiEsistere come io esistoLa terra è fatta di cieloNon ha nido la menzognaMai nessuno si è smarritoTutto è verità e passaggio”

“As vezes ouço passar o vento; e só de ouvir o vento passar, vale a pena ter nascido”

“It’s not demons (who at least have a human face) but Hell itself that seems to be laughing inside me, it’s the croaking madness of the dead universe, the spinning cadaver of physical space, the end of all worlds blowing blackly in the wind, formless and timeless, without a God who created it, without even its own self, impossibly whirling in the absolute darkness as the one and only reality, everything.”

“Já repeti o antigo encantamento,E a grande Deusa aos olhos se negou. Já repeti, nas pausas do amplo vento, As orações cuja alma é um ser fecundo. Nada me o abismo deu ou o céu mostrou. Só o vento volta onde estou toda e só, E tudo dorme no confuso mundo."Outrora meu condão fadava, as sarças E a minha evocação do solo erguia Presenças concentradas das que esparsas Dormem nas formas naturais das coisas. Outrora a minha voz acontecia.Fadas e elfos, se eu chamasse, via.E as folhas da floresta eram lustrosas."Minha varinha, com que da vontadeFalava às existências essenciais,Já não conhece a minha realidade.Já, se o círculo traço, não há nada. Murmura o vento alheio extintos ais,E ao luar que sobe além dos matagaisNão sou mais do que os bosques ou a estrada."Já me falece o dom com que me amavam.Já me não torno a forma e o fim da vidaA quantos que, buscando-os, me buscavam.Já, praia, o mar dos braços não me inunda.Nem já me vejo ao sol saudado ergUida,Ou, em êxtase mágico perdida, Ao luar, à boca da caverna funda."Já as sacras potências infernais,Que, dormentes sem deuses nem destino,À substância das coisas são iguais,Não ouvem minha voz ou os nomes seus. A música partiu-se do meu hino.Já meu furor astral não é divinoNem meu corpo pensado é já um deus."E as longínquas deidades do atro poço, Que tantas vezes, pálida, evoqueiCom a raiva de amar em alvoroço, lnevocadas hoje ante mim estão.Como, sem que as amasse, eu as chamei, Agora, que não amo, as tenho, e seiQue meu vendido ser consumirão."Tu, porém, Sol, cujo ouro me foi presa, Tu, Lua, cuja prata converti,Se já não podeis dar-me essa belezaQue tantas vezes tive por querer,Ao menos meu ser findo dividi Meu ser essencial se perca em si,Só meu corpo sem mim fique alma e ser!"Converta-me a minha última magiaNuma estátua de mim em corpo vivo! Morra quem sou, mas quem me fiz e havia, Anônima presença que se beija,Carne do meu abstrato amor cativo,Seja a morte de mim em que revivo;E tal qual fui, não sendo nada, eu seja!”