"Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions."

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More by Fernando Pessoa

“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.”

“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.”

“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

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— William Ewart Gladstone

Politics1809–1898

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"Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die."

— Seneca the Younger

Philosophy-4–65

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"We are not merely the physical creation of our parents; we are also the spiritual creation. You were born to these two people and their lives had an irrevocable effect on who you are... you were born.…"

— James Redfield

Literature1950

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"I am well aware of the fact that the human race has known about the existence of a universal energy related to life for many ages. However, the basic task of natural science consisted of making this e…"

— Wilhelm Reich

Psychology1897–1957

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