Christopher > Christopher's Quotes

“I Know, I Alone

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'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.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa

“But my sadness is comforting
Because it’s right and natural
And because it’s what the soul should feel
When it already thinks it exists
And the hand pick flowers
And the soul takes no notice.”
― fernando pessoa

“We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“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.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking.”
― Fernando Pessoa

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

“Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Rocks in my path? I keep them all. With them I shall build my castle.”
― Nemo Nox

“I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“After the rains departed the skies and settled on earth - clear skies; moist brilliant earth - greater clarity returned to life alone with the blue above and made the world below rejoice with the freshness of the recent rain. It left heaven in our souls and a freshness in our hearts.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Having never discovered qualities in myself that might attract someone else, I could never believe that anyone felt attracted to me.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn't what we see but what we are.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Without madness what is man
But a wholesome beast,
Postponed corpse that begets?”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa

“I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“To write is to forget. Literature is the pleasantest way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“To love is to tire of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“Today I suddenly experienced an absurd but quite valid sensation. I realized, in an intimate lightning flash, that I am no one. No one, absolutely no one.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“Whether or not they exist we are slaves to our gods.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems

“It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“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.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet