There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that societal norms are arbitrary and that each individual is unique.
Fernando Pessoa's quote suggests that the concept of norms is a social construct, implying that what we consider to be rules or standards are merely illusions. It encourages us to recognize and celebrate individuality, asserting that every person is an exception in their own right, free from the confines of imposed expectations.
In practice
During a motivational speech about embracing our unique qualities.
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.
I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side.
Here are some passing thoughts. Imagine looking up at the moon and seeing it burning. Imagine seeing the grocery store’s checkout girl grow horns. Imagine growing younger instead of older. Imagine feeling more powerful and more capable of falling in love with life every new day instead of being scared and sick and not knowing whether to stay under a sheet or venture forth into the cold.
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?
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