916 Quotes by Fernando Pessoa

I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me.

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

Faithful to the word given and the idea had.

To choose ways of not acting was ever the concern and scruple of my life.

One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard.

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've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect

Whoever, when he dies, leaves on paper a beautiful line of poetry has left the heavens richer and the earth too.

Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.