Let's develop theories, patiently and honestly thinking them out, in order to promptly act against them โ acting and justifying our actions with new theories that condemn them. Let's cut a path in life and then go immediately against that path. Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't even wish to be, and don't even wish to taken for being.
Fernando PessoaTo live is to be someone else. Feeling is impossible if we feel today as we felt yesterday: to feel today the same thing we felt yesterday is not to feel at all--it's merely to remember today what we felt yesterday, since today we are the living cadaver of yesterday's lost life.
Fernando PessoaI never had anyone I could call โMasterโ. No Christ died for me. No Buddha showed me the right path. In the depths of my dreams no Apollo or Athena appeared to me to enlighten my soul
Fernando PessoaAnd I have the others in me. Even when Iโm far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when Iโm all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.
Fernando PessoaWhat'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.
Fernando Pessoa