I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that one's perception of the world is shaped by internal experiences rather than external observations.
Fernando Pessoa's quote reflects a philosophical perspective that emphasizes the significance of inner thoughts and feelings in shaping an individual's understanding of reality. It implies that the way we interpret the outside world is deeply influenced by our inner state, suggesting that our perceptions and experiences are more subjective than objective, and that our internal reality defines how we engage with the world around us.
In practice
During a lecture on existentialism, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of subjective experience.
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.
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.
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.
Not a whole lot of us are wrestling somebody for a canned food item in the supermarket or having an ax fight in the jungle clearing. Instead, we sit and think about taxes and the ozone layer.
Pollution is everywhere, in that ancient Greek sense of miasma: guilt experienced as abject body fluid, moral pollution defining what kinds of beings count in social space.
It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.
Misled by fancy's meteor ray, By passion driven; But yet the light that led astray Was light from heaven.
There are no rules, no models; rather, there are no rules other than the general laws of Nature.
When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.
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