Fernando Pessoa

“Todas as cartas de amor sãoRidículas.Não seriam cartas de amor se não fossemRidículas.Também escrevi em meu tempo cartas de amor,Como as outras,Ridículas.As cartas de amor, se há amor,Têm de serRidículas.Mas, afinal,Só as criaturas que nunca escreveramCartas de amorÉ que sãoRidículas.Quem me dera no tempo em que escreviaSem dar por issoCartas de amorRidículas.A verdade é que hojeAs minhas memóriasDessas cartas de amorÉ que sãoRidículas.(Todas as palavras esdrúxulas,Como os sentimentos esdrúxulos,São naturalmenteRidículas.)”

“Conta a lenda que dormiaUma Princesa encantadaA quem só despertariaUm Infante, que viriaDe além do muro da estrada.Ele tinha que, tentado,Vencer o mal e o bem,Antes que, já libertado,Deixasse o caminho erradoPor o que à Princesa vem.A Princesa Adormecida,Se espera, dormindo espera,Sonha em morte a sua vida,E orna-lhe a fronte esquecida,Verde, uma grinalda de hera.Longe o Infante, esforçado,Sem saber que intuito tem,Rompe o caminho fadado,Ele dela é ignorado,Ela para ele é ninguém.Mas cada um cumpre o DestinoEla dormindo encantada,Ele buscando-a sem tinoPelo processo divinoQue faz existir a estrada.E, se bem que seja obscuroTudo pela estrada fora,E falso, ele vem seguro,E vencendo estrada e muro,Chega onde em sono ela mora,E, inda tonto do que houvera,À cabeça, em maresia,Ergue a mão, e encontra hera,E vê que ele mesmo eraA Princesa que dormia.”

“Trago dentro do meu coração,Como num cofre que se não pode fechar de cheio,Todos os lugares onde estive,Todos os portos a que cheguei,Todas as paisagens que vi através de janelas ou vigias,Ou de tombadilhos, sonhando,E tudo isso, que é tanto, é pouco para o que eu quero.”

“Toda a gente que eu conheço e que fala comigoNunca teve um ato ridículo, nunca sofreu enxovalho,Nunca foi senão príncipe - todos eles príncipes - na vida...”

“Nada fica de nada. Nada somos.Um pouco ao sol e ao ar nos atrasamosDa irrespirável treva que nos peseDa húmida terra imposta,Cadáveres adiados que procriam.Leis feitas, 'státuas vistas, odes findas - Tudo tem cova sua. Se nós, carnesA que um íntimo sol dá sangue, temosPoente, porque não elas?Somos contos contando contos, nada.”

“What's given, in fact, always depends on the person or thing it's given to. A minor incident in the street brings the cook to the door and entertains him more than I would be entertained by contemplating the most original idea, by reading the greatest book, or by having the most gratifying of useless dreams. If life is basically monotony, he has escaped it more than I. And he escapes it more easily than I. The truth isn't with him or with me, because it isn't with anyone, but happiness does belong to him.”

“Once we're able to see this world as an illusion and a phantasm, then we can see everything that happens to us as a dream, as something that pretended to exist while we were sleeping. And we will become subtly and profoundly indifferent towards all of life's setbacks and calamities. Those who die turned a corner, which is why we've stopped seeing them; those who suffer pass before us like a nightmare, if we feel, or like an unpleasant daydream, if we think. And even our own suffering won't be more than this nothingness.”

“Je me suis multiplié pour me sentir, Pour me sentir, j'ai eu besoin de tout ressentir; J'ai débordé, j'ai fini par me répandre”

“I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.”

“I am nothing.I will never be anything.I cannot wish to be anything.Bar that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.”

“الوضع الراهن للاكينونة”

“A vida é a hesitação entre uma exclamação e uma interrogação. Na dúvida, há um ponto final.”

“All I’ve ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing I’ve ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching.I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.”

“Primeiro estranha-se. Depois entranha-se".”

“Que importa àquele que já nada importaQue o um perca e outro vença,Se a aurora raia sempre,Se cada ano com a primaveraAparecem as folhasE com o outono cessam?”

“Acima da verdade estão os deuses.A nossa ciência é falhada cópiaDa certeza com que elesSabem que há o Universo.”

“Inutilmente parecemos grandes.Salvo nós nada pelo mundo foraNos saúda a grandezaNem sem querer nos serve.”

“Let's absurdify life, from east to west.Let us play hide-and-seek with our consciousness of living.”

“Só esta liberdade nos concedemOs deuses: submetermo-nosAo seu domínio por vontade nossa.Mais vale assim fazermosPorque só na ilusão da liberdadeA liberdade existe.”

“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 create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

“Today, suddenly, I reached an absurd but unerring conclusion. In a moment of enlightenment, I realized that I'm nobody, absolutely nobody. When the lightning flashed, I saw that what I had thought to be a city was in fact a deserted plain and, in the same sinister light that revealed me to myself, there seemed to be no sky above it. I was robbed of any possibility of having existed before the world. If I was ever reincarnated, I must have done so without myself, without a self to reincarnate.I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me.I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because every circle has one. I, I myself, am the well in which the walls have fallen away to leave only viscous slime. I am the centre of everything surrounded by the great nothing.And it is as if hell itself were laughing within me but, instead of the human touch of diabolical laughter, there's the mad croak of the dead universe, the circling cadaver of physical space, the end of all worlds drifting blackly in the wind, misshapen, anachronistic, without the God who created it, without God himself who spins in the dark of darks, impossible, unique, everything.If only I could think! If only I could feel!”

“Tomorrow I too - this feeling and thinking soul, the universe I am to myself - yes, tomorrow I too will be someone who no longer walks the streets, someone others will evoke with a vague: 'I wonder what's become of him?' And everything I do, everything I feel, everything I experience, will be just one less passer-by on the daily streets of some city or other.”

“As I walk, I construct perfect sentences that I cannot remember later at home. I don’t know if the ineffable poetry of those sentences derived from what they were or from their never having been (written).”

“And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living.”

“And leaning out the window, enjoying the day above the varying volume of the entire city, only one thought swells my soul – the intimate will to die, to finish, not to see more light over any city, not to think, not to feel, to leave behind like wrapping paper the course of the sun and the days, to rid myself, at the edge of the grand bed, as of a heavy suit, of the involuntary effort to be.”

“I go forward slowly, dead, and my vision is no longer mine, it’s nothing: it’s only the vision of the human animal who, without wanting, inherited Greek culture, Roman order, Christian morality, and all the other illusions that constitute the civilization in which I feel.Where can the living be?”

“Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.”

“And I have the others in me. Even when I’m far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I’m all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.”

“I walk along a street and see in the faces of the passersby not the expression they really have but the expression they would have for me if they knew about my life and how I am, if I carried, transparent in my gestures and my face, the ridiculous, timid abnormality of my soul.”

“…to know how to think with emotions and to feel with intellect…”

“I am the escaped one,After I was bornThey locked me up inside meBut I left. My soul seeks me, Through hills and valley,I hope my soulNever finds me.”

“‎Chove. Que fiz eu da vida?Fiz o que ela fez de mim...De pensada, mal vivida...Triste de quem é assim!”

“The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own”

“FIRST WATCHER Why do people die?SECOND WATCHER Perhaps because they don't dream enough...”

“THIRD WATCHER Let her speak. Don't interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her...I'm falling asleep in order to hear her...Go on, sister, go on...My heart aches because I wasn't you when you dreamed at the seashore...”

“Masquerades disclose the reality of souls. As long as no one sees who we are, we can tell the most intimate details of our life. I sometimes muse over this sketch of a story about a man afflicted by one of those personal tragedies born of extreme shyness who one day, while wearing a mask I don’t know where, told another mask all the most personal, most secret, most unthinkable things that could be told about his tragic and serene life. And since no outward detail would give him away, he having disguised even his voice, and since he didn’t take careful note of whoever had listened to him, he could enjoy the ample sensation of knowing that somewhere in the world there was someone who knew him as not even his closest and finest friend did. When he walked down the street he would ask himself if this person, or that one, or that person over there might not be the one to whom he’d once, wearing a mask, told his most private life. Thus would be born in him a new interest in each person, since each person might be his only, unknown confidant.”

“As figuras imaginárias têm mais relevo e verdade que as reais.”

“Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly.”

“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.”

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself. This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”

“To be great, be whole;Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.Be whole in everything. Put all you areInto the smallest thing you do.So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendorBecause it blooms up above.”

“O meu sentimento é cinzaDa minha imaginação,E eu deixo cair a cinzaNo cinzeiro da Razão.”

“Se te queres matar, porque não te queres matar?Ah, aproveita! que eu, que tanto amo a morte e a vida,Se ousasse matar-me, também me mataria...Ah, se ousares, ousa!”

“Pertenço a um gênero de portuguesesQue depois de estar a Índia descobertaFicaram sem trabalho. A morte é certa.Tenho pensado nisto muitas vezes.”

“Ao toque adormecido da morfinaPerco-me em transparências latejantesE numa noite cheia de brilhantes,Ergue-se a lua como a minha Sina.”

“There's something vile (and all the more vile because ridiculous) in the tendency of feeble men to make universal tragedies out of the sad comedies of their private woes.”

“I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man.”

“what has happened to us has happened to everyone or only us; if to everyone, then it's no novelty, and if only to us, then it won't be understood.”

“If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.”

“My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.”