
The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)

Renunciation is liberation. Not wanting is power.
Fernando Pessoa • The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)
If there’s any justice in the Gods’ injustice, then may they let us keep our dreams, even when they’re impossible, and may our dreams be happy, even when they’re trivial.
Fernando Pessoa • The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)
I’m oppressed by the very self that encases me,
Fernando Pessoa • The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)
a disdain full of disgust for those who don’t realize that the only reality is each man’s soul, and that everything else – the exterior world and other people – is but an unaesthetic nightmare, like the result, in dreams, of a mental indigestion.
Fernando Pessoa • The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)
Wise is the man who has the potential for height in his muscles but who renounces climbing in his consciousness. By virtue of his gaze, he has all hills, and by virtue of his position, all valleys. The sun that gilds the summits will gild them more for him than for someone at the top who must endure the bright light; and the palace perched high in
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A tedium that includes the expectation of nothing but more tedium; a regret, right now, for the regret I’ll have tomorrow for having felt regret today – huge confusions with no point and no truth, huge confusions…
Fernando Pessoa • The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)
But to say it’s a nice day is difficult, and the nice day itself passes on. It’s up to us to conserve the nice day in a wordy, florid memory, sprinkling new flowers and new stars over the fields and skies of the empty, fleeting outer world.
Fernando Pessoa • The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)
To heed the present moment isn’t a great or lasting concern of mine. I crave time in all its duration, and I want to be myself unconditionally.
Fernando Pessoa • The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)
I’ve had great ambitions and boundless dreams, but so has the delivery boy* or the seamstress, because everyone has dreams. What distinguishes certain of us is our capacity for fulfilling them, or our destiny that they be fulfilled.