"My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt."

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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

"Government clerics who enter the holy city of Ghom and its seminaries backed by money and not-so-hidden coercive powers of the state are a thorn in the side of independent clerics who are more interes…"

— Reza Pahlavi

Politics1960–1980

#hope

"Define it as we may, faith in Progress has been the mainspring of Liberalism in all its schools and branches."

— John Morley

Journalism1838–1923

#hope

"If thy hope be any thing worth, it will purify thee from thy sins."

— Joseph Alleine

Religion1634–1668

#hope

"Culture has become a system of defense against technics. This defense appears as a defense of man based on the assumption that technical objects contain no human reality. We should like to show that c…"

— Gilbert Simondon

Philosophy1924–1989

#philosophy