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Man Shouldn't Be Able To See His Own Face. That's What's Most Terrible. Nature Gave Him The Possibility Of Not Seeing It, As Well As The Incapacity Of Not Seeing His Own Eyes.

-Fernando Pessoa

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Man Shouldn't Be Able

Fernando Pessoa

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Man Shouldn't Be Able To See His Own Face. That's What's Most Terrible. Nature Gave Him The Possibility Of Not Seeing It, As Well As The Incapacity Of Not Seeing His Own Eyes.

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In Today's Life, The World Belongs Only To The Stupid, The Insensitive And The Agitated. The Right To Live And Triumph Is Now Conquered Almost By The Same Means By Which You Conquer Internment In An Asylum: The Inability To Think, Amorality And Hiperexcitation.

If We Knew The Truth, We'd See It; All Else Is System And Outskirts.

It's Been Months Since I Last Wrote. I've Lived In A State Of Mental Slumber, Leading The Life Of Someone Else. I've Felt, Very Often, A Vicarious Happiness. I Haven't Existed. I've Been Someone Else. I've Lived Without Thinking.

I Am Nothing. I'll Never Be Anything. I Couldn't Want To Be Something. Apart From That, I Have In Me All The Dreams In The World.

Sadly I Write In My Quiet Room, Alone As I Have Always Been, Alone As I Will Always Be. And I Wonder If My Apparently Negligible Voice Might Not Embody The Essence Of Thousands Of Voices, The Longing For Self Expression Of Thousands Of Lives, The Patience Of Millions Of Souls Resigned Like My Own To Their Daily Lot, Their Useless Dreams, And Their Hopeless Hopes.

Our Problem Isn't That We're Individualists. It's That Our Individualism Is Static Rather Than Dynamic. We Value What We Think Rather Than What We Do. We Forget That We Haven't Done, Or Been, What We Thought; That The First Function Of Life Is Action, Just As The First Property Of Things Is Motion.

Every Gesture Is A Revolutionary Act.

Talking To People Makes Me Feel Like Sleeping. Only My Ghostly And Imaginary Friends, Only The Conversations I Have In My Dreams, Are Genuinely Real And Substantial.

Let's Absurdify Life, From East To West. Let Us Play Hide-and-seek With Our Consciousness Of Living.

Everything I Sought In Life I Abandoned For The Sake Of The Search. I'm Like One Who Absentmindedly Looks For He Doesn't Know What, Having Forgotten It In His Dreaming As The Search Got Under Way.

I Never Meant To Be But A Dreamer.

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.

Never Read A Book To The End, Nor Even In Sequence And Without Skipping.

To Create, I Destroyed Myself; I Made Myself External To Such A Degree Within Myself That Within Myself I Do Not Exist Except In An External Fashion. I Am The Living Setting In Which Several Actors Make Entrances, Putting On Several Different Plays.

The Human Soul Is An Abyss

And Leaning Out The Window, Enjoying The Day Above The Varying Volume Of The Entire City, Only One Thought Swells My Soul – The Intimate Will To Die, To Finish, Not To See More Light Over Any City, Not To Think, Not To Feel, To Leave Behind Like Wrapping Paper The Course Of The Sun And The Days, To Rid Myself, At The Edge Of The Grand Bed, As Of A Heavy Suit, Of The Involuntary Effort To Be.

Should You Ask Me If I'm Happy, I'll Answer That I'm Not.

It's Been A Long Time Since I've Been Me.

There Is No Safe Standard To Tell Man From Animals.

That Is My Morality Or My Metaphysics Or Me Myself: A Passer-by In Everything, Even My Own Soul. I Belong To Nothing, I Desire Nothing, I Am Nothing Except An Abstract Centre Of Impersonal Sensations, A Sentient Mirror Fallen From The Wall But Still Turned To Reflect The Diversity Of The World.

I Was A Poet Animated By Philosophy, Not A Philosopher With Poetic Faculties.

In The Ordinary Jumble Of My Literary Drawer, I Sometimes Find Texts I Wrote Ten, Fifteen, Or Even More Years Ago. And Many Of Them Seem To Me Written By A Stranger: I Simply Do Not Recognize Myself In Them. There Was A Person Who Wrote Them, And It Was I. I Experienced Them, But It Was In Another Life, From Which I Just Woke Up, As If From Someone Else's Dream.

Let Us Sculpt In Hopeless Silence All Our Dreams Of Speaking.

These Pages Are Not My Confession; They’re My Definition. And I Feel, As I Begin To Write It, That I Can Write It With Some Semblance Of Truth.

We May Know That The Work We Continue To Put Off Doing Will Be Bad. Worse, However, Is The Work We Never Do. A Work That’s Finished Is At Least Finished. It May Be Poor, But It Exists, Like The Miserable Plant In The Lone Flowerpot Of My Neighbour Who’s Crippled. That Plant Is Her Happiness, And Sometimes It’s Even Mine. What I Write, Bad As It Is, May Provide Some Hurt Or Sad Soul A Few Moments Of Distraction From Something Worse. That’s Enough For Me, Or It Isn’t Enough, But It Serves Some Purpose, And So It Is With All Of Life.

To Live Is To Be Someone Else. Feeling Is Impossible If We Feel Today As We Felt Yesterday: To Feel Today The Same Thing We Felt Yesterday Is Not To Feel At All--it's Merely To Remember Today What We Felt Yesterday, Since Today We Are The Living Cadaver Of Yesterday's Lost Life.

The Chill Of What I Won't Feel Gnaws At My Present Heart.

But I Am Not Perfect In My Way Of Putting Things Because I Lack The Divine Simplicity Of Being Only What I Appear To Be.

Decadence Is The Total Loss Of Unconsciousness, Which Is The Very Basis Of Life. Could It Think, The Heart Would Stop Beating.

Property Isn't Theft: It's Nothing.

Life Hurls Us Like A Stone, And We Sail Through The Air Saying, "look At Me Move.

A Being Who, As I Grew Older, Lost Imagination, Emotion, A Type Of Intelligence, A Way Of Feeling Things - All That Which, While It Made Me Sorry, Did Not Horrify Me. But What Am I Experiencing When I Read Myself As If I Were Someone Else? On Which Bank Am I Standing If I See Myself In The Depths?

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.

Without Madness What Is Man But A Wholesome Beast, Postponed Corpse That Begets?

Nostalgia! I Feel It Even For Someone Who Meant Nothing To Me, Out Of Anxiety For The Flight Of Time And A Sickness Bred Of The Mystery Of Life. If One Of The Faces I Pass Daily On The Streets Disappears, I Feel Sad; Yet They Meant Nothing To Me, Other Than Being A Symbol Of All Life.

My Joy Is As Painful As My Pain.

What Is A Disease Is Wishing With An Equal Intensity What Is Needed And What Is Desirable, And Suffer For Not Being Perfect As You Would Suffer For Not Having Bread. The Romantic Error Is This Wanting The Moon As If There Was A Way To Get It.

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.

If After I Die, People Want To Write My Biography, There Is Nothing Simpler. They Only Need Two Dates: The Date Of My Birth And The Date Of My Death. Between One And Another, Every Day Is Mine.

If I Write What I Feel, It's To Reduce The Fever Of Feeling. What I Confess Is Unimportant, Because Everything Is Unimportant.

In The Very Corner Of My Soul There Is An Altar To A Different God.

Direct Experience Is The Evasion, Or Hiding Place Of Those Devoid Of Imagination.

To Have Defined And Sure Opinions, Fixed And Known Instincts, Passions And Character - All That Is The Horror Of Turning Our Soul Into A Fact, Materialize It And Make It External.

...the Painful Intensity Of My Sensations, Even When They're Happy Ones; The Blissful Intensity Of My Sensations, Even When They're Sad.

Book Of Disquiet

There’s Enough Metaphysics In Not Thinking About Anything.

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.

I Carry My Awareness Of Defeat Like A Banner Of Victory.

Whether Or Not They Exist We Are Slaves To Our Gods.

Have 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.

The End Is Low, Like All Quantitative Ends, Personal Or Not, And It Can Be Attained And Verified.

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.

Tomorrow I Too – This Feeling And Thinking Soul, The Universe I Am To Myself – Yes, Tomorrow I Too Will Be Someone Who No Longer Walks These Streets, Someone Others Will Evoke With A Vague: 'i Wonder What's Become Of Him?” And Everything I Do, Everything I Feel, Everything I Experience, Will Be Just One Less Passer-by On The Daily Streets Of Some City Or Other.

The Superiority Of The Dreamer Is That Dreaming Is Much More Practical Than Living, And That The Dreamer Extracts From Life A Much Vaster And Varied Pleasure Than The Action Man. In Better And More Direct Words, The Dreamer Is The Real Action Man.

What Has Happened To Us Has Happened To Everyone Or Only To Us; If To Everyone, Then It's No Novelty, And If Only To Us, Then It Won't Be Understood.

For Valuing Your Own Suffering Sets On It The Gold Of A Sun Of Pride. Suffering A Lot Can Originate The Illusion Of Being The Chosen Of Pain.

For I Am The Size Of What I See / Not My Height's Size.

Liberty Is The Possibility Of Isolation.

In Any Spirit That Isn't Deformed There Is The Belief In God. In Any Spirit That Is Not Deformed There Isn't The Belief In A Particular God.

All Of This Passes, And None Of It Means Anything To Me.it's All Foreign To My Fate, And Even To Fate As A Whole. It'sjust Unconsciousness, Curses Of Protest When Chance Hurlsstones, Echoes Of Unknown Voices - A Collectivemishmash Of Life.

Civilization Consists In Giving Something An Unfitting Name, Then Dream About The Result. And Indeed The False Name And The Real Dream Create A New Reality. The Object Really Becomes Another, Because We Turned It Into Another One. We Manufacture Realities.

Life Is Full Of Paradoxes, As Roses Are Of Thorns.

I Feel Closer Ties And More Intimate Bonds With Certain Characters In Books, With Certain Images I’ve Seen In Engravings, Than With Many Supposedly Real People With The Metaphysical Absurdity Known As ‘flesh And Blood’. In Fact, ‘flesh And Blood’ Describes Them Very Well: They Resemble Cuts Of Meat Laid Out On The Butcher’s Marble Slab, Dead Creatures Bleeding As Though Still Alive.

Life Is What We Make Of It. Travel Is The Traveler. What We See Isn't What We See But What We Are.

Book Of Disquiet

Everything Stated Or Expressed By Man Is A Note In The Margin Of A Completely Erased Text. From What's In The Note We Can Extract The Gist Of What Must Have Been In The Text, But There's Always A Doubt, And The Possible Meanings Are Many.

Friends: Not One. Just A Few Acquaintances Who Imagine They Feel Something For Me And Who Might Be Sorry If A Train Ran Over Me And The Funeral Was On A Rainy Day.

In Order To Understand, I Destroyed Myself.

Self Destruction

I Always Live In The Present. I Don’t Know The Future And No Longer Have The Past. The Former Oppresses Me As The Possibility Of Everything, The Latter As The Reality Of Nothing.

Between Me And Life Is A Faint Glass. No Matter How Sharply I See And Understand Life, I Cannot Touch It.

Ah, What A Morning This Is, Awakening Me To Life's Stupidity. [98 - Zenith Trans.]

I Take With Me The Conscience Of Defeat As A Victory Banner.

There Are No Norms. All People Are Exceptions To A Rule That Doesn’t Exist.

I've Reached The Point Where Tedium Is A Person, The Incarnate Fiction Of My Own Company.

If Life Has Given Us No More Than A Prison Cell, Let's At Least Decorate It As Best We Can-with The Shadows Of Our Dreams, Their Colourful Patterns Engraving Our Oblivion On The Static Surface Of The Walls.

All I’ve Ever Done Is Dream. That, And Only That, Has Been The Meaning Of My Existence. The Only Thing I’ve Ever Really Cared About Is My Inner Life. My Greatest Griefs Faded To Nothing The Moment I Opened The Window Onto My Inner Self And Lost Myself In Watching. I Never Tried To Be Anything Other Than A Dreamer. I Never Paid Any Attention To People Who Told Me To Go Out And Live. I Belonged Always To Whatever Was Far From Me And To Whatever I Could Never Be. Anything That Was Not Mine, However Base, Always Seemed To Be Full Of Poetry. The Only Thing I Ever Loved Was Pure Nothingness.

Literature Is The Most Agreeable Way Of Ignoring Life.

If A Man Can Only Write Well When Drunk, I'll Tell Him: Get Drunk. And If He Tells Me That His Liver Suffers With It, I'll Answer: What's Your Liver? It's A Dead Thing That Lives As Long As You Live, And The Poems You'll Write Will Live Without A As Long As.

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.

Let's Buy Books So As Not To Read Them; Let's Go To Concerts Without Caring To Hear The Music Or See Who's There; Let's Take Long Walks Because We're Sick Of Walking; And Let's Spend Whole Days In The Country, Just Because It Bores Us.

There Is A Time When It Is Necessary To Abandon The Used Clothes, Which Already Have The Shape Of Our Body And To Forget Our Paths, Which Takes Us Always To The Same Places. This Is The Time To Cross The River: And If We Don't Dare To Do It, We Will Have Stayed, Forever Beneath Ourselves

Wise Is He Who Enjoys The Show Offered By The World.

We Worship Perfection Because We Can't Have It; If We Had It, We Would Reject It. Perfection Is Inhuman, Because Humanity Is Imperfect.

There Is No Happiness Without Knowledge. But Knowledge Of Happiness Is Unhappy; For Knowing Ourselves Happy Is Knowing Ourselves Passing Through Happiness, And Having To, Immediatly At Once, Leave It Behind. To Know Is To Kill, In Happiness As In Everything. Not To Know, Though, Is Not To Exist.

To Think Is To Destroy.

I Don't Mourn The Loss Of My Childhood; I Mourn Because Everything, Including (my) Childhood, Is Lost.

Only Sterility Is Noble And Dignified. Only Killing What Never Was Is Elevated And Perverse And Absurd.

Everything Is Absurd.

If You Cannot Live Alone, You Were Born A Slave.

My Hapless Peers With Their Lofty Dreams--how I Envy And Despise Them! I'm With The Others, The Even More Hapless, Who Have No-one But Themselves To Whom They Can Tell Their Dreams And Show What Would Be Verses If They Wrote Them. I'm With Those Poor Slobs Who Have No Books To Show, Who Have No Literature Beside Their Own Soul, And Who Are Suffocating To Death Due To The Fact That They Exist Without Having Taken That Mysterious, Transcendental Exam That Makes One Eligible To Live.

Pg.9 "in My Heart There's A Peaceful Anguish, And My Calm Is Made Of Resignation.

What'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.

My Boredom With Everything Has Numbed Me.

Being Tired Of All Illusions And Of Everything About Illusions – The Loss Of Illusions, The Uselessness Of Having Them, The Prefatigue Of Having To Have Them In Order To Lose Them, The Sadness Of Having Had Them, The Intellectual Shame Of Having Had Them Knowing That They Would Have To End This Way.

Every Man Who Deserves To Be Famous Knows It Is Not Worth The Trouble.

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.

The Poet Is A Pretender. / He Pretends So Completely, / That He Even Pretends That It Is Pain / The Pain He Really Feels.

All That I've Lived I've Forgotten, As If I'd Vaguely Heard It. All That I'll Be Reminds Me Of Nothing, As If I'd Lived And Forgotten It.

To Be Great, Be Whole; Exclude Nothing, Exaggerate Nothing That Is Not You. Be Whole In Everything. Put All You Are Into The Smallest Thing You Do. So, In Each Lake, The Moon Shines With Splendor Because It Blooms Up Above.

And Let Our Despite Go To Those Who Work And Fight And Our Hate To Those Who Hope And Trust.

I Am The Outskirts Of Some Non-existent Town, The Long-winded Prologue To An Unwritten Book. I'm Nobody, Nobody. I Don't Know How To Feel Or Think Or Love. I'm A Character In A Novel As Yet Unwritten, Hovering In The Air And Undone Before I've Even Existed, Amongst The Dreams Of Someone Who Never Quite Managed To Breath Life Into Me.

I'd Like To Be In The Country So That I'd Could Like Being In The City.

Who Am I To Myself? Just A Feeling Of Mine.

Faithful To The Word Given And The Idea Had.

Again I See You, But Me I Don't See!, The Magical Mirror In Which I Saw Myself Has Been Broken, And Only A Piece Of Me I See In Each Fatal Fragment - Only A Piece Of You And Me!

I'm Upset By The Happiness Of All These Men Who Don't Know They're Unhappy. Because Of That, Though, I Love Them All. Dear Vegetables!

I Crave Time In All Its Duration, And I Want To Be Myself Unconditionally.

I’ve Always Wanted To Be Liked. It Grieved Me That I Was Treated With Indifference. Left An Orphan By Fortune, I Wanted—like All Orphans—to Be The Object Of Someone’s Affection. This Need Has Always Been A Hunger That Went Unsatisfied, And So Thoroughly Have I Adapted To This Inevitable Hunger That I Sometimes Wonder If I Really Feel The Need To Eat. Whatever Be The Case, Life Pains Me.

Myth Is The Nothing That Is All.

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.

Whenever Someone Tells Me He Dreamed, I Wonder If He Realizes That He Has Never Done Anything But Dream.

Third Watcher Let Her Speak. Don't Interrupt. She Knows Words That Mermaids Taught Her...i'm Falling Asleep In Order To Hear Her...go On, Sister, Go On...my Heart Aches Because I Wasn't You When You Dreamed At The Seashore.

Changing From The Ghosts Of Faith To The Spectres Of Reason Is Just Changing Cells.

My Curiosity Sister Of Larks.

The Beauty Of A Naked Body Is Felt Only By The Dressed Races.

Art Lies Because It's Social.

There's Something Vile (and All The More Vile Because Ridiculous) In The Tendency Of Feeble Men To Make Universal Tragedies Out Of The Sad Comedies Of Their Private Woes.

Ah, Who Will Save Me From Existing? It's Neither Death Nor Life That I Want.

I Come Closer To My Desk As To A Bulwark Against Life.

Ah, It's My Longing For Whom I Might Have Been That Distracts And Torments Me!

Book Of Disquiet

I 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.

I Asked For Very Little From Life, And Even This Little Was Denied Me. A Nearby Field, A Ray Of Sunlight, A Little Bit Of Calm Along With A Bit Of Bread, Not To Feel Oppressed By The Knowledge That I Exist, Not To Demand Anything From Others, And Not To Have Others Demand Anything From Me - This Was Denied Me, Like The Spare Change We Might Deny A Beggar Not Because We're Mean-hearted But Because We Don't Feel Like Unbuttoning Our Coat.

Having Touched Christ's Feet Is Not An Excuse For Punctuation Mistakes.

The Idea Of Any Social Obligation ... Just The Idea Of It Embarasses My Thoughts For A Day, And Sometimes It's Since The Day Before That I Worry, And Don't Sleep Well, And The Real Affair, When It Happens, Is Absolutely Insignificant And Justifies Nothing; And The Case Repeats Itself And I Never Learn To Learn.

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.

I Pass Times, I Pass Silences, Formless Worlds Pass Me By.

Everything Is Worthwhile If The Soul Is Not Small.

Isn't Joyful Or Painful This Pain In Which I Rejoice

The End Of Lower Art Is To Please, The End Of Average Art Is To Raise The Top, The End Of Superior Art Is To Free.

Humanitarianism Is Rude.

Humanitarianism

Nature Is The Difference Between The Soul And God.

There's A Tiredness Of Abstract Inteligence, And It's The Most Horrible Of Tirednesses. It Doesn't Weight On You Like The Tiredness Of The Body, Nor Does It Worry You Like The Tiredness Of Knowledge And Emotion. It's A Weightiness Of The Conscience Of The World, An Inability Of The Soul To Breathe.

The Essence Of What I Desire Is Simply This: To Sleep Away Life.

I’m Losing My Taste For Everything, Including Even My Taste For Finding Everything Tasteless.

I Sometimes Think That I Enjoy Suffering. But The Truth Is I Would Prefer Something Else.

Through An Experience That Simultaneously Involved My Sensibility And Intelligence, I Realized Early On That The Imaginative Life, However Morbid It Might Seem, Is The One That Suits Temperaments Like Mine. The Fictions Of My Imagination (as It Later Developed) May Weary Me, But They Don't Hurt Or Humiliate. Impossible Lovers Can't Cheat On Us, Or Smile At Us Falsely, Or Be Calculating In Their Caresses. They Never Forsake Us, And They Don't Die Or Disappear. --the Book Of Disquiet

The Principle Tragedy Of My Life Is, Like All Tragedies, An Irony Of Destiny. I Reject Real Life As If It Were A Condemnation; I Reject Dreams As If They Were An Ignoble Liberation. [...]after The End Of The Stars Uselessly Whitened In The Morning Sky And The Breeze Became Less Cold In The Barely Orange Tinged In The Yellow Of The Light On The Scattered Low Clouds, I, Who Hadn't Slept, Could Finally, Slowly Raise My Body, Exhausted From Nothing From The Bed From Which I Had Thought The Universe.

Sailing Is Necessary, Living Is Not Necessary.

Why Is Art Beautiful? Because It's Useless. Why Is Life Ugly? Because It's All Ends And Purposes And Intentions.

I Don't Write In Portuguese. I Write Myself.

Everything Interests Me, But Nothing Holds Me.

Book Of Disquiet

It's Not Demons (who At Least Have A Human Face) But Hell Itself That Seems To Be Laughing Inside Me, It's The Croaking Madness Of The Dead Universe, The Spinning Cadaver Of Physical Space, The End Of All Worlds Blowing Blackly In The Wind, Formless And Timeless, Without A God Who Created It, Without Even Its Own Self, Impossibly Whirling In The Absolute Darkness As The One And Only Reality, Everything.

For Who Expects Nothing, All That Comes Is Grateful

Pg 9, "the Consciousness Of Life's Unconsciousness Is The Oldest Tax Levied On The Intelligence.

Unconsciousness

To Know Nothing About Yourself Is To Live. To Know Yourself Badly Is To Think.

I Am The Escaped One, After I Was Born They Locked Me Up Inside Me But I Left. My Soul Seeks Me, Through Hills And Valley, I Hope My Soul Never Finds Me.

The Gods Sell When They Give. Glory Is Paid For With Disgrace. Poor Are The Happy, For They Are Just What Passes.

To Narrate Is To Create, For Living Is Just Being Lived.

My Dreams Are A Stupid Refuge, Like An Umbrella Against A Thunderbolt.

The World Belongs To Who Doesn't Feel. The Primary Condition To Be A Practical Man Is The Absence Of Sensitivity.

Ser Compreendido é Prostituir-se.

We Live By Action—by Acting On Desire. Those Of Us Who Don't Know How To Want—whether Geniuses Or Beggars—are Related By Impotence.

I Know Not What Tomorrow Will Bring.

Funny Famous Last Words

My Homeland Is The Portuguese Language.

Oh Salty Sea, How Much Of Your Salt Is Tears From Portugal?

The Supreme Empire Is That Of The Emperor Who Renounces All Normal Life, That Of Other Men, And In Who The Care Of Supremacy Doesn't Weigh Like A Load Of Jewels.

It's In An Inland Sea That The River Of My Life Ended.

Today I Suddenly Experienced An Absurd But Quite Valid Sensation. I Realized, In An Intimate Lightning Flash, That I Am No One. No One, Absolutely No One.

To Choose Ways Of Not Acting Was Ever The Concern And Scruple Of My Life.

My Past Is Everything I Failed To Be.

One Never Lives So Intensely As When One Has Been Thinking Hard.

At First I Felt Dizzy - Not With The Kind Of Dizziness That Makes The Body Reel But The Kind That's Like A Dead Emptiness In The Brain, An Instinctive Awareness Of The Void.

I Sometimes Think, With A Sad Delight, That If One Day, In A Future I No Longer Belong To, These Sentences, That I Write, Last With Praise, I Will At Last Have The People Who Understand Me, Those Mine, The True Family To Be Born In And Be Loved... I Will Only Be Understood In Effigy, When Affection No Longer Repays The Dead The Unaffection That Was, When Living.

Wasting Time Has An Esthetics To It.

I Am Tired Of Myself In Every Way. All Things, Deep Down To The Secret Of Their Roots, Are Stained By The Color Of My Weariness.

In This Metallic Age Of Barbarians, Only A Relentless Cultivation Of Our Ability To Dream, To Analyse And To Captivate Can Prevent Our Personality From Degenerating Into Nothing Or Else Into A Personality Like All The Rest.

I Wasn’t Meant For Reality, But Life Came And Found Me.

Book Of Disquiet

I Never Had Anyone I Could Call “master”. No Christ Died For Me. No Buddha Showed Me The Right Path. In The Depths Of My Dreams No Apollo Or Athena Appeared To Me To Enlighten My Soul

We Are Two Abysses - A Well Staring At The Sky.

La Literatura Es La Manera Más Agradable De Ignorar La Vida.

I've Never Done Anything But Dream. This, And This Alone, Has Been The Meaning Of My Life. My Only Real Concern Has Been My Inner Life.

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!

Given That We Cannot Know All The Elements In A Problem, We Never Can Solve It.

I Realize That, While Often Happy And Often Cheerful, I Am Always Sad.

I Read And Am Liberated. I Acquire Objectivity. I Cease Being Myself And So Scattered. And What I Read, Instead Of Being Like A Nearly Invisible Suit That Sometimes Oppresses Me, Is The External World’s Tremendous And Remarkable Clarity, The Sun That Sees Everyone, The Moon That Splotches The Still Earth With Shadows, The Wide Expanses That End In The Sea, The Blackly Solid Trees Whose Tops Greenly Wave, The Steady Peace Of Ponds On Farms, The Terraced Slopes With Their Paths Overgrown By Grape-vines.

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

Book Of Disquiet

I Am The Suburb Of A Non-existent Town, The Prolix Commentary On A Book Never Written. I Am Nobody, Nobody. I Am A Character In A Novel Which Remains To Be Written, And I Float, Aerial, Scattered Without Ever Having Been, Among The Dreams Of A Creature Who Did Not Know How To Finish Me Off.

There's No Regret More Painful Than The Regret Of Things That Never Were.

There's A Non-existent Peace In The Uncertain Quietness

Against Destiny I Fulfilled My Duty. Uselessly? No, For I Fulfilled It.

If I Had Written King Lear, I Would Regret It All My Life Afterwards. Because That Work Is So Big, That Its Defects Show As Huge, Its Monstrous Defects, Things Even Minimal In Between Some Scenes And Their Possible Perfection. It's Not The Sun With Spots; It's A Broken Greek Statue.

For A Long Time Now I Haven't Existed. I'm Utterly Calm. No One Distinguishes Me From Who I Am. I Just Felt Myself Breath As If I'd Done Something New, Or Done It Late. I'm Beginning To Be Conscious Of Being Conscious. Perhaps Tomorrow I Will Wake Up To Myself And Resume The Course Of My Existence. I Don't Know If That Will Make More Happy Or Less. I Don't Know Anything.

Writing Is Like Paying Myself A Formal Visit.

What Is Art But The Denial Of Life?

If, On Thinking This, I Look Up To See If Reality Can Quench My Thirst, I See Inexpressive Facades, Inexpressive Faces, Inexpressive Gestures. Stones, Bodies, Ideas - All Dead. All Movements Are One Great Standstill. Nothing Means Anything To Me, Not Because It's Unfamiliar But Because I Don't Know What It Is. The World Has Slipped Away. And In The Bottom Of My Soul - As The Only Reality Of This Moment - There's An Intense And Invisible Grief, A Sadness Like The Sound Of Someone Crying In A Dark Room.

We Almost Always Live Outside Ourselves, And Life Itself Is A Continual Dispersion. But It's Towards Ourselves That We Tend, As Towards A Centre Around Which, Like Planets, We Trace Absurd And Distant Ellipses.

If This Be To Have Sense, If To Be Awake Be But To See This Bright, Great Sleep Of Things, For The Rarer Potion Mine Own Dreams I'll Take And For Truth Commune With Imaginings

Fraternity Has Subtleties.

Each Of Us Is Several, Is Many,is A Profusion Of Selves. So That The Self Who Disdains His Surroundings Is Not The Same As The Self Who Suffers Or Takes Joy In Them. In The Vast Colony Of Our Being There Are Many Species Of People Who Think And Feel In Different Ways. Livro Do Desassossego

No Intelligent Idea Can Gain General Acceptance Unless Some Stupidity Is Mixed In With It.

Let's Develop Theories, Patiently And Honestly Thinking Them Out, In Order To Promptly Act Against Them – Acting And Justifying Our Actions With New Theories That Condemn Them. Let's Cut A Path In Life And Then Go Immediately Against That Path. Let's Adopt All The Poses And Gestures Of Something We Aren't And Don't Even Wish To Be, And Don't Even Wish To Taken For Being.

Art Consists In Making Others Feel What We Feel.

Book Of Disquiet

Everything Is Theater.

After The Rains Departed The Skies And Settled On Earth - Clear Skies; Moist Brilliant Earth - Greater Clarity Returned To Life Alone With The Blue Above And Made The World Below Rejoice With The Freshness Of The Recent Rain. It Left Heaven In Our Souls And A Freshness In Our Hearts.

On The Road Halfway Between Faith And Criticism Stands The Inn Of Reason. Reason Is Faith In What Can Be Understood Without Faith, But It's Still A Faith, Since To Understand Presupposes That There's Something Understandable.

Solitude Desolates Me; Company Oppresses Me.

We, All Who Live, Have A Life That Is Lived And Another Life That Is Thought, And The Only Life We Have It's The One That Is Divided In Right Or Wrong.

As We Wash Our Body So We Should Wash Destiny, Change Life As We Change Clothes.

Man Shouldn’t Be Able To See His Own Face – There’s Nothing More Sinister. Nature Gave Him The Gift Of Not Being Able To See It, And Of Not Being Able To Stare Into His Own Eyes. Only In The Water Of Rivers And Ponds Could He Look At His Face. And The Very Posture He Had To Assume Was Symbolic. He Had To Bend Over, Stoop Down, To Commit The Ignominy Of Beholding Himself. The Inventor Of The Mirror Poisoned The Human Heart.

Inch By Inch I Conquered The Inner Terrain I Was Born With. Bit By Bit I Reclaimed The Swamp In Which I'd Languished. I Gave Birth To My Infinite Being, But I Had To Wrench Myself Out Of Me With Forceps.

Give To Each Emotion A Personality, To Each State Of Mind A Soul.

Blessed Are Those Who Entrust Their Lives To No One.

Blessed Are Those

Book Of Disquiet

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George Henry Lewes

Constantin Brancusi

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