And 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 PessoaTo say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, people squirming โ like worms when a rock is lifted โ under the huge abstract boulder of the meaningless blue sky.
Fernando PessoaI look for myself but find no one. I belong to the chrysanthemum hour of bright flowers placed in tall vases. I should make an ornament of my soul.
Fernando PessoaI suffer from life and from other people. I canโt look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful โ only then do I find myself and feel comforted.
Fernando PessoaHave you ever considered, beloved other, how invisible we are to each other? We look at each other without seeing. We listen to each other and hear only a voice inside out self. The words of others are mistakes of our hearing, shipwrecks of our understanding. How confidently we believe OUR meanings of other people's words.
Fernando Pessoa