Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.
Interpretation
The quote expresses skepticism about the depth of friendship, suggesting that acquaintances may only feel a superficial concern.
Fernando Pessoa reflects on the nature of friendship, implying that what we often call friends are, in reality, merely acquaintances who may feel a fleeting sense of pity rather than genuine care. He questions the authenticity of these relationships, suggesting that true friends are rare, and that many people only express concern in response to dramatic events rather than through everyday support and connection.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of friendships at a social gathering.
I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.
It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.
I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.
We are one in Christ; let us be friends with one another; but let us never be friends with one another’s error. If I be wrong, rebuke me sternly; I can bear it, and bear it cheerfully; and if ye be wrong, expect the like measure from me, and neither peace nor parley with your mistakes.
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
You win the victory when you yield to friends.
To this day, some of my closest friends say, 'Gaga, you know, everything's great. You're a singer; your dreams have come true.' But, still, when certain things are said to you over and over again as you're growing up, it stays with you and you wonder if they're true.
Whatever will happen will happen, but choose your companions with care. Choose them because you like to look at them and you like the sound of their voices, and they have profound secrets in them that you wish to know. In other words, choose them because you love them. Otherwise you will not be able to bear their company for very long.
I think that women definitely have a special bond as friends that is hard to describe to men, and we don't often see that portrayed narratively.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.