Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is 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 PessoaThe value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people!
Fernando PessoaWeโve been devastated by the severest and deadliest drought in history โ that of our profound awareness of the futility of all effort and the vanity of all plans.
Fernando PessoaWe may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work thatโs finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbour whoโs crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes itโs even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. Thatโs enough for me, or it isnโt enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.
Fernando Pessoa