“The Complete Work is essentially dramatic, thought it takes different forms - prose passages in this first volume, poems and philosophies in other volumes. It's the product of the temperament I've been blessed or cursed with - I'm not sure which. All I know is that the author of these lines (I'm not sure if also of these books) has never had just one personality, and has never thought or felt except dramatically - that is, through invented persons, or personalities, who are more capable than he of feeling what's to be felt.”
Fernando Pessoa“All letters of love are Ridiculous. They wouldn’t be love letters if they were not Ridiculous.”
Fernando Pessoa“Without madness what is manBut a wholesome beast,Postponed corpse that begets?”
Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa“Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice”
Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa“Again I see you, But me I don't see!, The magical mirror in which I saw myself has been broken, And only a piece of me I see in each fatal fragment - Only a piece of you and me!...”
Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa“Lord, may the pain be ours, And the weakness that it brings, But at least give us the strength, Of not showing it to anyone!”
Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa“To be great, be whole;Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.Be whole in everything. Put all you areInto the smallest thing you do.So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendorBecause it blooms up above.”
Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa“If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.”
Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa“The Complete Work is essentially dramatic, thought it takes different forms - prose passages in this first volume, poems and philosophies in other volumes. It's the product of the temperament I've been blessed or cursed with - I'm not sure which. All I know is that the author of these lines (I'm not sure if also of these books) has never had just one personality, and has never thought or felt except dramatically - that is, through invented persons, or personalities, who are more capable than he of feeling what's to be felt.”
Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa“Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly.”
Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa“Success consists in being successful, not in having potential for success. Any wide piece of ground is the potential site of a palace, but there's no palace till it's built.”
Fernando Pessoa