"I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life."

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More by Fernando Pessoa

“Some sensations are sleeps that take up all the extent of the mind like a fog, don't let us think, don't let us act, don't let us be clearly.”

“We’ve been devastated by the severest and deadliest drought in history – that of our profound awareness of the futility of all effort and the vanity of all plans.”

“I'm going to end a life that I thought could contain every kind of greatness but that in fact consisted only of my incapacity to really want to be great. Whenever I arrived at a certainty, I remembered that those with the greatest certainties are lunatics.”

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

“And let our despite go to those who work and fight and our hate to those who hope and trust.”

“Wasting time has an esthetics to it.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Like Hitler, the social democracy and Kautsky were opposed to both bolshevism and communism. Even a complete state-capitalist system as the Russian was rejected by both in favour of mere state control…"

— Paul Mattick

Economics1904–1981

#life

"Anyone who really carries out this existence in spirit and letter must see it as a foretaste of death, of the radical and irrevocable parting from all things that make life rich, sweet and attractive.…"

— Ida Friederike Görres

Religion1901–1971

#life

"Andrew Johnson lacked Lincoln's qualities of greatness. While Lincoln had been open-minded, willing to listen to criticism, attuned to the currents of northern public opinion, and able to get along wi…"

— Eric Foner

Literature1943

#life

"She's got a rum job, but she knows how to do it, and to have a job and know how to do it is one of the best things in this life. And if only she stops hankering after Cambridge..."

— Arthur Ransome

Medicine1834–1922

#life