Portugese Quotes

“I’ve always felt an almost physical loathing for secret things--intrigues, diplomacy, secret societies, occult sciences. What especially irks me are these last two things--the pretension certain men have that, through their understandings with Gods or Masters or Demiurges, they and they alone know the great secrets on which the world is founded.

I can’t believe their claims, though I can believe someone else might. But is there any reason why all these people might not be crazy or deluded? The fact there are a lot of them proves nothing, for there are collective hallucinations.

What really shocks me is how these wizards and masters of the invisible, when they write to communicate or intimate their mysteries, all write abominably. It offends my intelligence that a man can master the Devil without being able to master the Portuguese language. Why should dealing with demons be easier than dealing with grammar?”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“At first sight
Of those bodies,
Like mine
Or any other--

No: like mine
But intact--why
Did those men,
Asway that entire day,

Seadrunk
On parched land,
Not think:
The Lord is Grand.

Why was that riddle
Not something
They knelt to? Why,
Instead, did they take it as a sign

That their want
Should lead them?
The riddle
Doesn't go away.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question