916 Quotes by Fernando Pessoa

I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.

In any spirit that isn't deformed there is the belief in God. In any spirit that is not deformed there isn't the belief in a particular God.

And let our despite go to those who work and fight and our hate to those who hope and trust.

I never cared about whatever tragic event happened in China. It's faraway decoration, even if in blood and plague.

There are those that even God exploits, and they are prophets and saints in the vacuousness of the world.

If a man can only write well when drunk, I'll tell him: get drunk. And if he tells me that his liver suffers with it, I'll answer: what's your liver? It's a dead thing that lives as long as you live, and the poems you'll write will live without a as long as.

All pleasure is a vice, for seeking pleasure is what everybody does in life, and the only dark vice is doing what everybody does.

Literature exists because the world isn’t enough.

Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what’s in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there’s always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.