Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French...
NationalityPortuguese
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth13 June 1888
CityLisbon, Portugal
CountryPortugal
I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.
In the very corner of my soul there is an altar to a different god.
My homeland is the portuguese language.
Wasting time has an esthetics to it.
Sometimes, when I wake up at night, I feel invisible hands weaving my destiny.
I am tired of myself in every way. All things, deep down to the secret of their roots, are stained by the color of my weariness.
I've reached the point where tedium is a person, the incarnate fiction of my own company.
Should you ask me if I'm happy, I'll answer that I'm not.
And let our despite go to those who work and fight and our hate to those who hope and trust.
There is a time when it is necessary to abandon the used clothes, which already have the shape of our body and to forget our paths, which takes us always to the same places. This is the time to cross the river: and if we don't dare to do it, we will have stayed, forever beneath ourselves
And as well as I dream, I reason if I want, for that's just another kind of dream.
My soul's the present shadow of a presence gone.
What's given, in fact, always depends on the person or thing it's given to. A minor incident in the street brings the cook to the door and entertains him more than I would be entertained by contemplating the most original idea, by reading the greatest book, or by having the most gratifying of useless dreams. If life is basically monotony, he has escaped it more than I. And he escapes it more easily than I. The truth isn't with him or with me, because it isn't with anyone, but happiness does belong to him.
I belong to a generation - assuming that this generation includes others besides me - that lost its faith in the gods of the old religions as well as in the gods of modern nonreligions. I reject Jehova as I reject humanity.