916 Quotes by Fernando Pessoa

But everything is absurd, and dreaming least of all.

We’re convalescents. Most of us are people who never learned an art or a trade, not even the art of enjoying life. Since we’re basically averse to prolonged social contact, even the greatest of friends tend to bore us after half an hour; we only long to see them when we think about seeing them, and the best moments we spend with them occur in our dreams.

Let’s buy books so as not to read them; let’s go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who’s there; let’s take long walks because we’re sick of walking; and let’s spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.

I’m upset by the happiness of all these men who don’t know they’re unhappy. Because of that, though, I love them all. Dear vegetables!

To have defined and sure opinions, fixed and known instincts, passions and character – all that is the horror of turning our soul into a fact, materialize it and make it external.

There’s a thin sheet of glass between me and life. However clearly I see and understand life, I can’t touch it.

Other people’s understanding of us is made up of so many complex misunderstandings.

Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful – only then do I find myself and feel comforted.

But someone afflicted by tedium feels himself the prisoner of a futile freedom, in a cell of infinite size.