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.
I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises. Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was, I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat. I was never convinced of what I believed in. I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through. Words were my only truth. When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always b..
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.
Life 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.
To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat-- some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself. This isn't the case with literature. Literature simu..
XIII Lightly, lightly, very lightly A very light wind passes, And it goes away just as lightly, And I don't know what I'm thinking, Nor do I wish to know.
In me all affections take place on the surface, but sincerely. I've always been an actor, and in earnest. Whenever I've loved, I've pretended to love, pretending it even to myself.
I try to say what I feel Without thinking about what I feel. I try to place words right next to my idea So that I won't need a corridor Of thought leading to words.
A tree's shade is worth more than the knowledge of truth, my sons, for a tree's shade is true while it lasts, and the knowledge of truth is false in its very truth. The leaves' greenness is worth more, for a right understanding, than a great thought, for the leaves, greenness is something you can show others, but you can never show them a great thought. We are born without knowing how to talk and we die without having known how to express o..
I wander as I walk straight ahead. When it's time, I show up at the office like everyone else. When it's not time, I go to the river to gaze at the river, like everyone else. I'm no different. And behind all this, O sky my sky, I secretly constellate and have my infinity.
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.
I have to choose what I detest - either dreaming which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn't born, or dreaming, for which no one was born. Detesting both, I choose neither; but since I must on occasion either dream or act, I mix the two things together.
Giving importance to what we think because we thought it, taking our own selves not only (to quote the Greek philosopher) as the measure of all things but as their norm or standard, we create in ourselves, if not an interpretation, at least a criticism of the universe, which we don't even know and therefore cannot criticize. The giddiest, most weak-minded of us then promote that criticism to an interpretation that's superimposed, like a hal..
O night in which the stars feign light, O night that alone is the size of the Universe, make me, body and soul, part of your body, so that--being mere darkness--I'll lose myself and become night as well, without any dreams as stars within me, nor a hoped-for sun shining with the future.
Trago dentro do meu coracao, Como num cofre que se nao pode fechar de cheio, Todos os lugares onde estive, Todos os portos a que cheguei, Todas as paisagens que vi atraves de janelas ou vigias,
I have no philosophy, I have senses . . . If I speak of Nature it's not because I know what it is But because I love it, and for that very reason, Because those who love never know what they love Or why they love, or what love is. To love is eternal innocence, And the only innocence is not to think . .
Happy the creators of pessimistic systems! Besides taking refuge in the fact of having made something, they can exult in their explanation of universal suffering, and include themselves in it. I don't complain about the world. I don't protest in the name of the universe. I'm not a pessimist. I suffer and complain, but I don't know if suffering is the norm, nor do I know if it's human to suffer. Why should I care to know? I suffer, without k..
NEVOEIRO Nem rei nem lei, nem paz nem guerra, define com perfil e ser este fulgor baco da terra que e Portugal a entristecer - brilho sem luz e sem arder, como o que o fogo-fatuo encerra. Ninguem sabe que coisa quer. Ninguem conhece que alma tem, nem o que e mal nem o que e bem. (Que ancia distante perto chora?) Tudo e incerto e derradeiro. Tudo e disperso, nada e inteiro. O Portugal, hoje es nevoeiro... E a Hora!
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 the 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.
Does a flower really have beauty? Does a fruit really have beauty? No: they have only color and form And existence. Beauty is the name of something that doesn't exist But that I give to things in exchange for the pleasure they give me. It means nothing. So why do I say about things: they're beautiful?
To live is to be other. It's not even possible to feel, if one feels today what he felt yesterday. To feel today what one felt yesterday isn't to feel - it's to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be today's living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost. To erase everything from the slate from one day to the next, to be new with each new morning, in a perpetual revival of our emotional virginity - this, and only this, is worth b..
Perhaps it's my destiny to remain a book-keeper for ever and for poetry and literature to remain simply butterflies that alight on my head and merely underline my own ridiculousness by their very beauty.
I have a very simple morality: not to do good or evil to anyone. Not to do evil, because it seems only fair that others enjoy the same right I demand for myself - not to be disturbed - and also because I think that the world doesn't need more than the natural evils it already has. All of us in this world are living on board a ship that is sailing from one unknown port to another, and we should treat each other with a traveller's cordiality...
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 can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me. I missed them all, through deliberate negligence, Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn't come.