The snow threw a silent towel over everything.
One feels nothing but what goes on inside the house.
I wrap myself in a blanket and don't even think of
       thinking.
Feeling creature comfort and dimly thinking,
I fall asleep with no less purpose than anything else going
        on in the world.


– Fernando Pessoa (trans. Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown)

"Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!"


– Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

[Rhymes mean nothing to me. Only rarely]


Rhymes mean nothing to me. Only rarely
Are two trees identical, standing side by side.
My thinking and writing are like flowers having color
But the way I express myself is less perfect
Because I lack the divine simplicity 
Of being only what I appear to be.


I look and I am moved,
Moved as water flows when the ground slopes,
And my poetry is natural, like the rising of the wind . . .


– Fernando Pessoa

"Why do I write, if I can’t write any better? But what would become of me if I didn’t write what I can, however inferior it may be to what I am? In my ambitions, I am a plebeian, because I try to achieve; like someone afraid of a dark room, I’m afraid to be silent. I’m like those who prize the medal more than the struggle to get it, and savour glory with a fur-lined cape.”


– Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (trans. Richard Zenith)