I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire for authenticity over being fully understood by others, suggesting that compromising oneself for understanding can diminish one's individuality.
Fernando Pessoa's quote highlights the complex relationship between self-perception and how we are perceived by others. It suggests that striving for understanding can lead to a loss of authenticity, as individuals may conform to others' expectations in order to be accepted. Instead, Pessoa advocates for embracing the mystery of one's self and maintaining respect for one's individuality, regardless of how one is misunderstood.
In practice
In a speech about individuality, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of remaining true to oneself.
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.
Ultimately, the transgender question is about more than just sex. It's about what it means to be human.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics.
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman._x000D_ There is not even a rope to tow the boat, and no one to pull it._x000D_ There is no earth, no sky, no time, no thing, no shore, no ford!
She thought about her life and how lost she’d felt for most of it. She thought about the way that all truths she’d been taught to consider valuable invariably conflicted with the world as it was actually lived. How could a person be so utterly lost, yet remain living?
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
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