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.
For a man's counsel cannot have equal weight or worth, when he alone has no children to risk in the general danger.
The energy or active exercise of the mind constitutes life.
A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.
It is good to be charitable; but to whom? That is the point. As to the ungrateful, there is not one who does not at last die miserable.
Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.
In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not.
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