And I have the others in me. Even when Iām far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when Iām all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.
Fernando PessoaDecadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating.
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 PessoaMy happiest hours are those in which I think nothing, want nothing, when I do not even dream, but lose myself in some spurious vegetable torpor, moss growing on the surface of life. Without a trace of bitterness I savour my absurd awareness of being nothing, a mere foretaste of death and extinction.
Fernando Pessoa