Every spoken word double-crosses us. The written word is the only tolerable form of communication, as it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls but a ray of light between stars.
Fernando PessoaWe live by actionโby acting on desire. Those of us who don't know how to wantโwhether geniuses or beggarsโare related by impotence.
Fernando PessoaI feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images Iโve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as โflesh and bloodโ. In fact, โflesh and bloodโ describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid out on the butcherโs marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive.
Fernando PessoaBetween me and life is a faint glass. No matter how sharply I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.
Fernando PessoaLife is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally. The end result is what matters. What one felt was what one experienced. One retires to bed as wearily from having dreamed as from having done hard physical labor. One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard.
Fernando Pessoa