Fernando Pessoa Quotations | Page 3

Smell is a strange sight. It evokes sentimental landscapes through a sudden sketching of the subconscious.

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.

The poet is a pretender. / He pretends so completely, / that he even pretends that it is pain / the pain he really feels.

You breathe better when you're rich.

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.

God gave the sea the danger and the abyss, but it was in it that He mirrored the sky.

I don't write in Portuguese. I write myself.

My joy is as painful as my pain.

I was a poet animated by philosophy, not a philosopher with poetic faculties.

Give to each emotion a personality, to each state of mind a soul.