916 Quotes by Fernando Pessoa

Everything wearies me, even those things that don’t. My joy is as painful as my grief.

Yes, tedium is boredom with the world, the malaise of living, the weariness of having lived; in truth, tedium is the feeling in one’s flesh of the endless emptiness of things.

There is no body or truth we possess, nor even any illusion. We are phantoms made of lies. Shadows of illusions, our lives are hollow on both the outside and the inside.

Believing that each step of my life would mean contact with the horror of the New and that each new person I met was a new and living fragment of the unknown to be placed before me on the table for my daily horrified contemplation, I decided to abstain from everything, to go nowhere, to reduce action to the minimum, to avoid as far as possible meeting either men or events, to perfect abstinence and cultivate renunciation. That’s how much living frightens and torments me.

I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me – this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we’re mean-hearted but because we don’t feel like unbuttoning our coat.

There’s no greater proof of an impoverished mind than its inability to be witty except at other people’s expense.

There are pigs like me that wallow in their destiny, not drawing away from the banality of daily life because they’re enthralled by their own impotence.

I acquired, with regard to action, a transcendental honesty which, ever since I became aware of it, has inhibited me from having any strong links with the tangible world.

Peki, kim kurtaracak beni var olmaktan?