Book of restlessness: the best phrases to lead to reflection

In the phrases of the Book of Desasosiego we discover one of the greatest poets of all time: Fernando Pessoa. Each statement is at the same time a caress and a blow. This is what this text is like: beautiful and painful.

The phrases of book of restlessness They are fragments of a true masterpiece. This wonderful text is considered the best of Fernando Pessoa’s prose books. It was written over 22 years and is actually a compilation of reflections.

In this work there are digressions on all kinds of everyday topics . Also some fragments of Pessoa’s diary, as well as aphorisms and short reflections. The phrases from the book of unrest are, without a doubt, several of the best achieved by the great Portuguese poet.

“To me, when I see a dead person, death seems like a departure. The corpse gives me the impression of an abandoned suit. Someone left and didn’t need to wear that unique suit he had worn.”.

-Fernando Pessoa-

The edition of this book which seems definitive, was only made until 2010. Other editions had appeared before, but they included phrases from book of restlessness that were not really by Fernando Pessoa. That’s why a purge was done. Some of the most beautiful affirmations are the following.

Search blindly…

Many of the phrases of book of restlessness They emphasize the meaninglessness of life and the absurdity of existence. This, for example, reflects that position clearly: “I am like someone searching blindly, not knowing where they hid the object that they did not tell him what it is. Let’s play hide and seek with no one”.

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Pessoa tells us there that human beings live revolving around nothing. We have no idea what our purpose is, much less how we will achieve it. We avoid others, who in turn are in the same conditions as us. For the poet, this is the game of life.

One of the phrases from the Book of Disquiet about ghosts

This is a deep and beautiful reflection by Fernando Pessoa. He says: “Get past the ghosts from faith to the specters of reason is nothing more than being changed cells”. With this statement, the poet moves away from the two great axes of Western thought: faith and reason.

As is known, For centuries, these two areas have disputed the kingdom of thought. Faith denying reason and reason denying faith. Pessoa defines them both as imaginary, but also as prisons. Both one and the other limit the perspective and confine thought to an exclusive plot.

everything is imperfect

Perfection is one of the most abstract and idealistic concepts that exist. A mental fruit, which does not correspond to any reality. To complete, the human being yearns for it, but at the same time makes it impossible due to the eternal nonconformity that inhabits us.

Due to the above, one of the phrases of the book of restlessness says: “But everything is imperfect and there is no sunset so beautiful that it could not be a little more beautiful, nor a soft lulling breeze that could not produce us an even calmer sleep.”. He emphasizes in this assessment that what human beings make of reality is never enough.

The beauty of the useless

This is a beautiful reflection by Pessoa, which says like this: “Why is art so beautiful? Because it’s useless. Why is life so ugly? Because in it everything is ends and purposes. All its paths lead from one point to another point. I wish there was a road made in a place no one goes!”.

Art lacks practical meaning. It has value for what it is, not for the usefulness it can provide.. Nobody needs Las Meninas to live, but he magnifies his existence by contemplating the painting. The world continues to spin whether the Eiffel Tower exists or not, but the planet becomes sublime because it is there.

In ordinary life the opposite happens. Things, and even people, acquire value for the benefit they provide or fail to provide.. Human beings also only go after what represents some use to us. Under these conditions, in life the great and the sublime are renounced. That is what Pessoa questions in that statement.

The orphan of fortune

Much of the book of restlessness It is the autobiography of Fernando Pessoa, despite the fact that he signed it with the pseudonym Bernardo Soares. That’s why, In the text there are moving confessions that speak of loneliness and helplessness..

One of those intimate passages says: “It has always been my desire to be pleasant to others and it has hurt me a lot that they have always been indifferent to me. Orphan of fortune, I have, like all orphans, the need to be the object of affection from someone”.

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Throughout the entire book, Pessoa defines himself as someone who is a failure, who does not find any meaning in his existence. He is an orphan of fortune because he has lost even the desire to be happy. Even so, in the previous statement declares that love can be that balm that compensates for the absence of achievements and the denial of a happy destiny.

Fernando Pessoa is one of the most important poets of all time. He book of restlessness He shows us the complexity of his feelings and the acuity of his reflections. Each phrase in it is a small poem ready to be discovered by the mind of a sensitive reader..