"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!"
"And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other."
33 likes
Source: The Book of Disquiet. Book by Fernando Pessoa, number 168, 1982.
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Fernando Pessoa
"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."
"Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn't what we see but what we are."
"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."
"The slope takes you to the windmill, but effort takes you nowhere."
"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."