My hapless peers with their lofty dreams--how I envy and despise them! I'm with the others, the even more hapless, who have no-one but themselves to whom they can tell their dreams and show what would be verses if they wrote them. I'm with those poor slobs who have no books to show, who have no literature beside their own soul, and who are suffocating to death due to the fact that they exist without having taken that mysterious, transcendental exam that makes one eligible to live.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep sense of envy and despair over unfulfilled dreams and the isolation of creativity.
In this quote, Fernando Pessoa reflects on the feelings of inadequacy and envy he experiences towards his peers, who have lofty dreams and the means to express them. He feels trapped among those who have no external validation or creative outlets, emphasizing a profound longing to share and manifest his own dreams and thoughts, which leads to a sense of existential suffocation and a yearning for recognition and connection through literature and art.
In practice
In a speech at a creative writing workshop, one might quote this to inspire vulnerability and sharing among budding authors.
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.
Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.
Look at those numbers running. Money makes time. It used to be the other way around. Clock time accelerated the rise of capitalism. People stopped thinking about eternity. They began to concentrate on hours, measurable hours,man-hours, using labor more efficiently.
God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.
There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness.
Aiki is not a technique to fight with or defeat an enemy. It is the way to reconcile the world and make human beings one family.
We were equals once when we lay new-born babes on our nurse's knees. We will be equal again when they tie up our jaws for the last sleep.
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