The 60 best phrases (and reflections) of Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa was a writer and poet of Portuguese originBorn in Lisbon, his works became a benchmark for his country's literature, also reaching high international levels. He was characterized by something very particular, his way of acquiring different personalities to write and criticize his own works, which he called 'heteronyms'.

• We recommend you read: "The 70 best phrases (and reflections) of Pablo Neruda"

Best quotes from Fernando Pessoa

This writer left a great legacy of works and also a halo of mystery due to his enigmatic personality, which continues to fascinate many and we can learn thanks to this collection of quotes and reflections by Fernando people

1. Literature exists because the world is not enough.

Books become an escape from reality.

2. I'm nothing. I will never be anything. I can not want to be anything. Apart from this, I have in me all the dreams in the world.

Not expecting anything from anyone, not even from us, can help us live in peace.

3. A rainy day is as beautiful as a sunny day. Both exist; each one is as it is.

Everything can have beauty in itself, if we are able to see it.

4. If after I die you want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. He has only two dates, the one of my birth and the one of my death. Between one and the other, every day is mine.

Pessoa owned his life.

5. Only one thing amazes me more than the stupidity with which most men live their lives: the intelligence in this stupidity.

Intelligence and stupidity can go hand in hand.

6. The delight of hate cannot be compared to the delight of being hated.

Being envy hurts us from the inside. But that they envy us is a sign of our value.

7. Put everything you are into the least you do.

No matter how big what you do, leave a mark.

8. I feel so isolated that I can feel the distance between me and my presence.

Not everyone feels connected to the people of this world.

9. What, I believe, produces in me the deep feeling, in which I live, of inconsistency with others, is that the majority think with sensitivity and I feel with thought.

Explaining why he felt so far from the rest of the people.

10. The most painful feelings and the most poignant emotions are the absurd ones: the anxiety of impossible things, precisely because they are impossible, the nostalgia for what has never been, the desire for what could have been, the pain of not being another, dissatisfaction with the existence of the world.

Worrying about what we don't have or what we can't be is the worst burden we can carry.

11. The trips are the travelers. What we see is not what we see, but what we are.

Travel fills us with experience, new knowledge and another way of seeing the world.

12. Things have no meaning: they have existence. Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

Things have the meaning that we give them.

13. All love letters are ridiculous. They would not be love letters if they were not ridiculous.

Love must be absurd to be real.

14. Whoever lives like me does not die: he ends, withers, devegetates.

It has a more heartbreaking ending.

15. I was born at a time when most young people had stopped believing in God for the same reason that their elders had believed in Him.

A significant loss of faith.

16. Being a poet is not my ambition, it is my way of being alone.

It's the way he manages to express himself.

17. The dignity of intelligence lies in recognizing that it is limited and that the universe is outside of it.

Every day we can acquire new knowledge, there is never a limit.

18. Going from the ghosts of faith to the specters of reason is nothing more than being changed from cell.

Fanaticism can go beyond religions.

19. I love how love loves. I don't know any other reason to love than to love you. What do you want me to tell you besides that I love you if what I want to tell you is that I love you?

Love is the essence of everything.

20. Love is a deadly token of immortality.

It is the best expression of our humanity.

21. Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness; because unconsciousness is the foundation of life.

Decadence exists when we are no longer interested in anything else.

22. Only this freedom is granted to us by the gods: to submit to their rule by our will. We had better do so because only in the illusion of freedom does freedom exist.

A controlled free will?

23. Living is not necessary, what is necessary is to create...

What was important to Pessoa in this world.

24. Look at life from afar... never question her. She can't tell you anything, the answer is beyond the gods.

Life can only be lived, never understood.

25. What I did not hit in life, I will find in death; Life is divided between who I am and luck.

A sign that he was never against death.

26. We never love anyone: we only love the idea we have of someone.

And it is that idea that leads us to disappointment when it does not come true.

27. The ultimate function of criticism is to satisfy the natural function of disdaining, which is appropriate for good mental hygiene.

Criticism is necessary as long as it helps us grow.

28. Success is in being successful, and not in having conditions for success. Any large piece of land has conditions for a palace, but where will the palace be if they don't build it there?

A deep reflection on what it really means to be successful.

29. To me, when I see a dead person, death looks like a game to me. The corpse gives me the impression of an abandoned suit. Someone left and he didn't need to wear that unique outfit that he had worn.

Your perception of death.

30. Imperfect and all, there is no west so beautiful that it couldn't be more.

Each landscape has a beauty that cannot be compared.

31. Art is the expression of itself striving to be absolute.

His vision of the meaning behind art.

32. Thought is still the best way to escape from thought.

Our mind can create an escape bubble from reality.

33. We hate what we almost are.

The worst regret is not becoming what we dream of being. Even if it's impossible.

34. Living itself is dying, because there is not one more day in our life that is not one less day in life.

We die each day at the same time that we live to the fullest each day.

35. Hope is the duty of feeling.

Hope is the last thing you lose.

36. Do not teach anything, since you still have everything to learn.

We are always learning something new in this life.

37. First be free; then ask for freedom.

You can't demand something you don't have.

38. I have all the conditions to be happy, except happiness.

Happiness is also subjective. But not everyone is capable of reaching it.

39. Try to be who you are, whether they love you or not.

Remember that the only person you have to please is you, not anyone else.

40. Literature is the most pleasant way to ignore life.

A personal refuge.

41. What we love is our concept, that is, ourselves.

Remember that the things that are important to you may not be to others.

42. Other times I hear the wind go by, and it seems to me that only to hear the wind go by is worth being born.

It's the little things that calm us down, that bring us true happiness.

43. Who, like me, living like this, does not know how to have life, what is left for him but, like my few peers, renouncing by way and contemplation by destiny?

About resigning ourselves to what fate wants from us.

44. The ancient navigators had a glorious phrase: "Sailing is necessary, living is not."

A phrase he kept in mind about how to live his own life.

45. If you have the truth, keep it to yourself!

The truth sooner or later emerges.

46. Between life and me there is a dim glass. No matter how clearly I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.

Talking about the distance he felt between himself and the world around him.

47. The world belongs to those who are born to conquer it and not to those who dream that they can conquer it.

Your actions should always be stronger than your words.

48. Not knowing about oneself; That is living. Knowing badly about oneself, that is thinking.

We can always improve, but for ourselves, not for someone else.

49. There is quite a lot of metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

Not thinking about anything leads us to great reflections.

50. The awareness of the unconsciousness of life is the oldest tax that falls on intelligence.

Ignoring what we try to silence takes a cruel toll on us over time.

51. To have been in a shipwreck or in a battle is something beautiful and glorious; the worst thing is that he had to be there to be there.

War heroes always arrive, although no one wants to be on the battlefield.

52. Beauty is Greek. But the awareness that it is Greek is modern.

On the legacy that Greek culture left to the world.

53. The place where he was continues without him being there, the street where he walked continues without him being seen in it, the house he lived in is inhabited by not him.

The world goes on, despite what happens to us.

54. Don't do today what you can stop doing tomorrow too.

Focus on what makes you happy and get rid of what brings you misery.

55. Zero is the greatest metaphor. Infinity the greatest analogy. The existence the greatest symbol.

On the mystical character of the universe and of existence itself.

56. There is no worse feeling than feeling isolated from others. Although, now that I think about it, there is something worse. That of feeling isolated from our own “I”.

Worse than feeling alone in the world is feeling uncomfortable with ourselves.

57. With such a lack of people to coexist with, as there is today, what can a man of sensibility do but invent his friends, or at least his spirit companions?

One of his reasons for writing and creating his own worlds.

58. My past is everything I failed at.

Thousands of errors live in the past, but they must not come to the present.

59. The hidden meaning of life is that life has no hidden meaning.

The 'secret' to a happy life is simply to live.

60. What distinguishes people is the strength to achieve it or to let fate do it to us.

If we are conformists or fight for what we want.