Silence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. I’m sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I don’t know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don’t know what to think or where I am.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a deep state of introspection amidst the monotony and quiet of rain.
In this quote, Fernando Pessoa captures a moment of existential reflection where the sound and sight of rain evoke a complex mixture of sensations and emotions. The imagery of the rain and the act of standing by the window symbolize a contemplative state, as the narrator grapples with feelings of confusion, uncertainty, and a sense of disconnection from their surroundings. It portrays the tranquil yet profound experience of being lost in thought while engaged with the world around them.
In practice
This quote could be used in a literary discussion about the role of weather in literature.
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.
A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.
Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.
The cause is hidden; the effect is visible to all.
You knew how humiliating that is as an experience for celebrities to be less of a celebrity. There's no class to adjust to being less famous, and you don't think you have to worry about it. But you do.
What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance, and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?
All law is situational law. The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision.
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