Life 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 PessoaI search and can't find myself. I belong in chrysanthemum time, sharp in calla lily elongations. God made my soul into an ornamental thing.
Fernando PessoaTomorrow I too โ this feeling and thinking soul, the universe I am to myself โ yes, tomorrow I too will be someone who no longer walks these streets, someone others will evoke with a vague: 'I wonder what's become of him?โ And everything I do, everything I feel, everything I experience, will be just one less passer-by on the daily streets of some city or other.
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 PessoaSilence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. Iโm sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I donโt know what I feel or what I want to feel. I donโt know what to think or where I am.
Fernando Pessoa