Natalia > Natalia's Quotes

“When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”
― Lin Yutang

“XIII
Lightly, lightly, very lightly
A very light wind passes,
And it goes away just as lightly,
And I don’t know what I’m thinking,
Nor do I wish to know.”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

“Everything, except boredom, bores me. I’d like, without being calm, to calm down,
To take life every day
Like a medicine—
One of those medicines everybody takes.

I aspired to so much, dreamed so much, That so much so much made me into nothing.
My hands grew cold
From just waiting for the enchantment
Of the love that would warm them up at last.

Cold, empty
Hands.”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

“I have no philosophy, I have senses . . .
If I speak of Nature it’s not because I know what it is
But because I love it, and for that very reason,
Because those who love never know what they love
Or why they love, or what love is.
To love is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not to think . .”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

“Does a flower really have beauty?
Does a fruit really have beauty?
No: they have only color and form
And existence.
Beauty is the name of something that doesn’t exist
But that I give to things in exchange for the pleasure they
give me.
It means nothing.
So why do I say about things: they’re beautiful?”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

“What matters is to be natural and calm
In happiness and in unhappiness,
To feel as if feeling were seeing,
To think as if thinking were walking,
And to remember, when death comes, that each day dies,
And the sunset is beautiful, and so is the night that
remains . . .
That’s how it is and how I want it to be . . .”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

“Beyond the bend in the road
There may be a well, and there may be a castle,
And there may be just more road.
I don’t know and don’t ask.
As long as I’m on the road that’s before the bend
I look only at the road before the bend,
Because the road before the bend is all I can see.
It would do me no good to look anywhere else
Or at what I can’t see.
Let’s pay attention only to where we are.
There’s only enough beauty in being here and not somewhere else.
If there are people beyond the bend in the road,
Let them worry about what’s beyond the bend in the road.
That, for them, is the road.
If we’re to arrive there, when we arrive there we’ll know.
For now we know only that we’re not there.
Here there’s just the road before the bend, and before the bend
There’s the road without any bend.”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

“I’m certain, but my certainty is a lie.
To be certain is to not be seeing.
The day after tomorrow doesn’t exist.
This is what exists:
A blue sky that’s a bit hazy and some white clouds on the
horizon,
With a dark smudge underneath, as if they might turn black.
This is what today is,
And since for the time being today is everything, this is
everything.
I might be dead—who knows?—the day after tomorrow,
In which case the storm that will strike the day after
tomorrow
Will be a different storm than it would be if I hadn’t died.
I realize that the storm doesn’t fall from my eyes,
But if I’m no longer in this world, the world will be
different—
There will be one person less—
And the storm, falling in a different world, won’t be the
same storm.
In any case, the storm that’s going to fall will be the one
falling when it falls.

10 JULY 1930”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems