The 30 best quotes by Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet.

These are the thoughts of one of the best Portuguese writers.

If there is an outstanding representative of Portuguese literature and poetry, this is Fernando Pessoa.

He was born in Lisbon in 1888, Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was an enigmatic and discreet character who, during his time, produced important works on journalism and literature in prose and verse.

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The best phrases and reflections of Fernando Pessoa.

Through his works, which are still being studied and analyzed today, Pessoa considered himself a journalist by profession but a literary man by vocation.

In today's article we are going to know 30 of his best reflections and phrases extracted from his books and poems..

1. All love letters are ridiculous. They would not be love letters if they were not ridiculous.

Love stories often embrace the incomprehensible.

2. I have to choose what I detest: either the dream, which my intelligence hates, or the action, which my sensibility repulses; or the action for which I was not born, or the dream for which no one was born. As it turns out, since I detest both, I choose neither, but, since I sometimes have to dream or act, I mix one with the other.

The constant struggle between reason and emotion, embodied in this famous quote by Fernando Pessoa.

3. If after my death they wanted to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. It has only two dates, that of my birth and that of my death. Between one and the other, every day is mine.

A philosophy of life based on discretion.

4. Whoever lives as I do does not die: it ends, withers, fades away. The place where he was is still without him being there, the street where he walked is still without him being seen in it, the house he lived in is inhabited by not him.

One of Pessoa's most remembered and studied phrases.

5. I was born at a time when most young people had stopped believing in God for the same reason that their elders had believed in Him.

A reflection on the beliefs and generational change that took place in Portugal at the beginning of the 20th century.

6. Beauty is Greek. But the awareness that it is Greek is modern.

The Greeks themselves were unaware that they were creating a model of beauty that would transcend their historical era.

7. To have been in a shipwreck or in a battle is something beautiful and glorious; the worst thing is that it was necessary to be there to be there.

A phrase to reflect on wars.

8. To be a poet is not an ambition of mine, it is my way of being alone.

A way of being, according to the great Fernando Pessoa.

9. Not to know about oneself; that is to live. To know badly about oneself, that is to think.

As in many of his writings, Pessoa recognizes that unconsciousness is an elemental part of happiness.

10. Art is the expression of itself struggling to be absolute.

Transcending epochs and fashions, that is art.

11. We are avatars of past stupidity.

A curious and very personal way of understanding culture.

12. I have the duty to shut myself up in the house of my spirit and work as much as I can and in everything I can for the progress of civilization and the broadening of the conscience of mankind.

A way of expressing his involvement in the world of letters.

13. The delight of hatred cannot be compared to the delight of being hated.

To arouse envy is one of the great pleasures of life, according to this sentence by Pessoa.

14. Thinking is still the best way to flee from thought.

A paradox: only by thinking can we flee from thoughts.

15. I am not concerned about my conscience, but about being conscious.

When we are conscious we are vigilant of our actions.

16. God is God's best joke.

A phrase for free interpretation.

17. Man is selfishness mitigated by indolence.

Self-centeredness, a uniquely human characteristic.

18. All that man exposes or expresses is a note in the margin of a text that is totally extinguished. More or less, by the meaning of the note, we extract the meaning that was to be that of the text; but there always remains a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.

On the different ways of understanding reality.

19. The only attitude worthy of a superior man is the tenacious persistence in an activity that is recognized as useless, the habit of a discipline that is known to be sterile, and the fixed use of standards of philosophical and metaphysical thought whose importance is felt to be null.

Persistence is the key to great discoveries and achievements.

20. It is enough for us, if we think, the incomprehensibility of the universe; to want to understand it is to be less than men, because to be man is to know that it is not understood.

A reflection on knowledge.

21. Love is a mortal sample of immortality.

Through love we express this double condition.

22. Zero is the greatest metaphor. Infinity is the greatest analogy. Existence the greatest symbol.

In this sentence, Pessoa mixes mathematical concepts with language concepts.

23. He who has never lived oppressed does not feel freedom.

We are only capable of perceiving this sensation when we have been deprived of it.

24. We never love anyone: we love only the idea we have of someone. What we love is our concept, that is to say, ourselves.

Love, according to Pessoa, is after all a self-referential perception.

26. If after my death they wanted to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. It has only two dates - the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and the other every day is mine.

Nothing remains except the experience lived by himself.

27. First be free; then ask for freedom.

Only a free-thinking person is capable of claiming freedom for himself and for his fellows.

28. Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness; for unconsciousness is the foundation of life.

When we are totally conscious we become puppets sculpted by the mercantile society.

29. I write these lines, really badly annotated, not to say this, nor to say anything, but to occupy my inattention in something.

A form of therapy, according to Pessoa, that of writing down one's thoughts.

30. With such a lack of people to coexist with, as there is today, what can a man of sensitivity do but invent his friends, or at least his companions in spirit?

A sad reflection on loneliness, in the eyes of the great Fernando Pessoa.