And I have the others in me. Even when I’m far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I’m all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the internal struggle of identity and the inescapable nature of one's thoughts and memories.
In this quote, Fernando Pessoa expresses the complexity of self-identity and how it is influenced by relationships and memories of others. He suggests that even in solitude, one cannot escape their thoughts and the connections to those they have encountered, highlighting the idea that one's sense of self is shaped by both external and internal factors.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a reflective post on social media about personal growth.
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.
Black is real sensation, even if it is produced by entire absence of light. The sensation of black is distinctly different from the lack of all sensations.
There are colors we can't see, but they're connected to the ones we can, There's a connection between everything.
From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.
Faith is illuminative, not operative; it does not force obedience, though it increases responsibility; it heightens guilt, but it does not prevent sin. The will is the source of action.
Done to death by slanderous tongue
Acts have their being in the witness. Without him who can speak of it? In the end one could even say that the act is nothing, the witness all.
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