Book Of Disquiet Quotes

• My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Symphony, Soul, Sound

  149 Copy quote

• Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Life, Art, Solitude

  Fernando Pessoa (1988). “Numbers: 4”

  72 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Hold Me, Interest, Relatable

  112 Copy quote

• We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Love Is, Self, Ideas

  Fernando Pessoa (2007). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.251, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  140 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Up Early, Long, Ready

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (1996). “Book of Disquietude”, Carcanet Press Limited

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Battle, Bears, Avoided

  105 Copy quote

• I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t 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 Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Life, Depressing, Real

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.390, Penguin UK

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Hope, Hurt, Regret

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (1996). “Book of Disquietude”, Carcanet Press Limited

  192 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect

  Fernando Pessoa

  Taken, Rejected, Understood

  Fernando Pessoa (2007). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.330, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  93 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "The Book of Disquiet".

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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 Pessoa

  Memories, Imagination, Personality

  66 Copy quote

• I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Tired, Sleep

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.70, Profile Books

  97 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Waking, Wake Up, Feels

  35 Copy quote

• And I have the others in me. Even when I’m far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I’m all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Crowds, Far Away, All Alone

  7 Copy quote

• If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Writing, Feelings, Fever

  Fernando Pessoa (2007). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.324, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Children, Distance

  "The Book of Disquiet".

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• One or another man, liberated or cursed, suddenly sees-but even this man sees rarely-that all we are is what we aren't, that we fool ourselves about what's true and are wrong about what we conclude is right. And this man, who in a flash sees the universe naked, creates a philosophy or dreams up a religion; and the philosophy spreads and the religion propagates, and those who believe in the philosophy begin to wear it as a suit they don't see, and those who believe in the religion put it on as a mask they soon forget.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Philosophy, Philosophical

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p. 255, 1982.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art consists in making others feel what we feel.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Art, Feels

  Fernando Pessoa (2017). “The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition”, p.357, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The 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 Pessoa

  Unique, People, Lasts

  202 Copy quote

• I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Want, Feels

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.157, Profile Books

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living?

  Fernando Pessoa

  Knowing, Life Is

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (1996). “Book of Disquietude”, Carcanet Press Limited

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Perfection, Humanity, Imperfect

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, 1982.

  82 Copy quote

  Show source

• Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Blessed, Blessed Are Those

  7 Copy quote

• There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Real, People, Metaphor

  Fernando Pessoa (1996). “The Book of Disquietude: By Bernardo Soares, Assistant Bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!

  Fernando Pessoa

  Might, Longing, Torment

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.54, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

  Show source