9 Fernando Pessoa Quotes on Art

Fernando Pessoa quotes on art

25. I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.

84. I search and can't find myself. I belong in chrysanthemum time, sharp in calla lily elongations. God made my soul into an ornamental thing.

103. What is art but the denial of life?

111. If a man can only write well when drunk, I'll tell him: get drunk. And if he tells me that his liver suffers with it, I'll answer: what's your liver? It's a dead thing that lives as long as you live, and the poems you'll write will live without a as long as.

113. Art consists in making others feel what we feel.

114. Art lies because it's social.

122. We adore perfection because we can't have it; it would disgust us if we had it. Perfect is inhuman, because human is imperfect.

123. If I had written King Lear, I would regret it all my life afterwards. Because that work is so big, that its defects show as huge, its monstrous defects, things even minimal in between some scenes and their possible perfection. It's not the sun with spots; it's a broken greek statue.

138. Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.