"What is art but the denial of 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

"The phase transition paradigm: The standard model of fundamental physics incorporates, as one of its foundational principles, the idea that “empty space” or “vacuum” can exist in different phases, typ…"

— Frank Wilczek

Science1951

#life

"Buck stared at this degenerate ambassador for his own popularity, wondering how many other Brethren fans were homicidal, nut-job stalkers. Maybe it's time to quit the show and go fishin', he thought f…"

— Carl Hiaasen

Journalism1953

#life

"I went vegetarian after watching Earthlings. I had no idea how intense and how horrible factory farms are. I have such a love for animals that I can’t justify having their heads cut off for me. And th…"

— Hannah Teter

1987

#life

"She strode like a grenadier, was strong and upright like an obelisk, had a beautiful face, a candid brow, pure eyes, and not a thought of her own in her head."

— Joseph Conrad

fiction1857–1924

#life