The 5 best phrases of Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet and writer who was born in 1888 and died in 1935.. Although he also immersed himself in the journalistic, advertising and commercial sectors, he obtained his greatest success in his role as a writer, with which he left us great gems. Therefore, today we collect some of Fernando Pessoa’s best phrases.

If there is something that characterizes the poems and writings that this author produced, it is his great power to suggest, to leave a space for the reader in which he could interpret. Through the treatment of very subjective topics and the use, or perhaps abuse, of heteronymy, Fernando Pessoa invites us to deep reflections. Perhaps because it has such a peculiar style it has caught the attention of many researchers.

Today we will discover Fernando Pessoa in the phrases that we have collected and that allow us to get a little closer to the vision that this great writer had about the world, relationships and other aspects of life. Let’s go with them!

1. “I feel so isolated that I can feel the distance between me and my presence.”

This is one of the first phrases by Fernando Pessoa that we have collected and that allows us to reflect on our existence. Sometimes We are so focused on the outside that we forget about the other part, ourselves.. This distance between us and our presence causes us to sometimes not know who we are.

Not knowing who we are can lead us to feel a great emptiness. A void difficult to fill. A sensation that we cannot satisfy with any external stimulus. Being disconnected from our interior represents a threat to our authentic happiness because we will not even know who we are..

Are we ourselves before others? What have we given up to please others or to improve the image we project? What have we not said for fear of other people’s disapproval? All this causes an isolation with our deepest “I”. That which turns out to be our essence. Yes, the one we put aside as if he mattered less than his multiple reflections in others.

2. “Put everything you are into the least you do”

Fernando Pessoa invites us with this phrase to give the most of ourselves, because Sometimes we do not give everything because we believe that what we do is not important, when the importance is usually not defined by the object itself, but by our disposition.. In this sense, if we wake up to our involvement from the dream in which we usually live, we will realize that small actions can give us an enormous feeling of well-being.

If we take this attitude into account and carry it out, we will end up making it a habit that will benefit us as well as enrich us. Let us remember that normally What costs us the most is also what we end up feeling most satisfied with.. Because thanks to that effort we surpass ourselves, we grow and we face challenges that make us exclaim “you see, you could!”

For all this, let us not devalue what we do, no matter how trivial it may seem to us. The most insignificant thing at first can give us great knowledge and teachings, as well as open doors. The small steps are the most important: whether short or long, high or low, they are the ones we take along the paths we choose.

3. “Travel is travelers. “What we see is not what we see, but what we are.”

This third of Fernando Pessoa’s phrases opens a great door for us to take a new perspective on the world around us. Because every time we see something outside, Every time we judge or every time we criticize, in what we see there is a part of us

We cannot judge someone who criticizes without looking like the accused in the trial. It’s like that wise and often heard proverb that goes like this: “we see the speck in another’s eye and not the beam in our own.”

It is true that we tend to perceive defects in others first and that it is difficult for us to see them in ourselves. However, what we see is what we are. Why do people react in different ways when faced with an obstacle? Why do some feel like victims and others don’t? Because that is what we choose to be and project it to the world.

Where some see order, others see disorder. Where some see drama, others see learning. Therefore, we see the world through who we are. If our mind is rigid and inflexible, we can interpret a setback as a “catastrophe.” If our minds are open and flexible, we can use setbacks to practice acceptance and patience.

4. “Don’t do today what you can stop doing tomorrow”

Procrastination is a great evil. We tend to leave things for another day, as if we had all the time in the world and we could waste it. Therefore, there is a saying “don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” However, there is another that teaches us something similar, but from a different perspective. This is the fourth of Fernando Pessoa’s phrases.

Fernando Pessoa invites us to question what we are doing. Worth? Does it bring us closer to our dreams or distance us from them? It’s a waste of time? Let’s not do anything just to do it. Let’s think carefully about our goals, our dreams and try to give meaning to that which runs out second by second: time.

Many times we don’t feel good. We feel unhappy, perhaps pigeonholed in our comfort zone… However, we do not rethink what we do every day. We have to analyze it, question it and if what we are doing we don’t want to do or we can stop doing it tomorrow or the next day, so be it! Time is valuable. Let’s appreciate it.

5. “Things have no significance: they have existence. “Things are the only hidden meaning of things.”

This last of Fernando Pessoa’s phrases brings us closer to a tendency that human beings have because they feel safer this way: putting labels on everything. If something doesn’t have a label, it seems like it doesn’t exist. Existence by itself seems meaningless.

If we analyze the way we communicate, with this phrase from Fernando Pessoa we can realize all this. In our vocabulary the word “thing” is a wildcard. We use it for everything. However, what really is its meaning? In the lack of that meaning lies its existence, its lack of personality.

All these phrases by Fernando Pessoa bring us closer to a different window. A window through which we can look at the world around us from totally new perspectives. The brilliance of his thinking and his skill with words is evident through all these reflections.. The depth of his phrases and his work itself have turned him into an author whose legacy continues to be interpreted and analyzed by the enormous skill that he gives to it.

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