Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935)
Portuguese poet and writer, most of whose work was published posthumously.
The Gods sell when they give.
Glory is paid for with disgrace.
Poor are the happy, for they are
Just what passes.
The end is low, like all quantitative ends, personal or not, and it can be attained and verified.
My head and the universe ache me.
They were two and beautiful and wanted to be something else; love delayed itself to them in the tedium of the future, and regret of what would happen to be was already being the daughter of the love they hadn't had.
I never meant to be but a dreamer.
And let our despite go to those who work and fight and our hate to those who hope and trust.
My curiosity sister of larks.
Who doesn't feel commands. He who only thinks what is required in order to win, wins.
It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living.
His livid face is a bewildered false green. I notice it, between the chest's hard air, with the fraternity of knowing I will also be so.
In order to understand, I destroyed myself.
... And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.
To travel? In order to travel it's enough to be. [...] Why travel? In Madrid, in Berlin, in Persia, in China, at the Poles both, where would I be but in myself, and in the sort and kind of my sensations?
Tedium is the lack of a mithology. To whom has no beliefs, even doubt is impossible, even skepticism has no strength to suspect.
I don't write in Portuguese. I write myself.
I will be what I want. But I will have to want what I'll be. Success is in having success, not conditions for success.
Art consists in making others feel what we feel.
Having touched Christ's feet is not an excuse for punctuation mistakes.
For the moment being, given that we live in society, the only duty of superior men is to reduce to a minimum their participation in the tribe's life. Not to read newspapers, or read them only to know about whatever unimportant and curious is going on.
[...] The supreme honorable state for a superior man is in not knowing who is the Head of State of his country, or if he lives under a monarchy or a republic.
All his attitude must be setting his soul so that the passing of things, of events doesn't bother him. If he doesn't do it he will have to take an interest in others in order to take care of himself.
A tedium that includes only the anticipation of more tedium; the regret, now, of tomorrow regretting having regretted today.