Portuguese Literature Quotes & Sayings

I am a keeper of flocks.
The flocks are my thoughts
and all my thoughts are sensations.
I think with my eyes and my ears,
with my hands and with my feet
and with my nose and my mouth.
For to consider a flower is to both see it and smell it
and to eat of fruit is to understand its meaning.

So when the sun is at its brightest
and I feel guilty for embracing it,
I stretch out, supine, on the grassy earth,
and close my sun drenched eyes.
I view my entire body lying firmly on reality,
I know the truth, and am content. — Alberto Caeiro

No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve. — Hector Hugh Munro

I am convinced I was once a tree, this is why I love them so. — Raul Brandao

Saudade is presented as the key feeling of the Portuguese soul. The word comes from the Latin plural solitates, "solitudes," but its derivation was influenced by the idea and sonority of the Latin salvus, "in good health," "safe." A long tradition that goes back to the origins of Lusophone language, to the thirteenth-century cantiga d'amigo, has repeatedly explored, in literature and philosophy, the special feeling of a people that has always looked beyond its transatlantic horizons. Drawn from a genuine suffering of the soul, saudade became, for philosophical speculation, particularly suitable for expressing the relationship of the human condition to temporality, finitude, and the infinite. — Barbara Cassin

I spent most of my adult life looking for romantic love. — Daphne Zuniga

With one eye on the past,
some see which they cannot see,
whilst others in the future see
that which cannot be seen.

Why go so far, look closer!
What is freedom? The day is here!
This is the hour, the moment;
and this moment is who we are and that is that.

Forever flowing, the eternal hour
reveals our insignificance.
In a single gasp we live and die, so size the day,
for the day is simply who you are. — Ricardo Reis

We think of our species as swinging on the pinnacle of evolution, but this definitely isn't the final design. If our bodies don't evolve much further, our minds will. It's the only way our species can save itself. An evolution of human consciousness is only a matter of time. And that's when we will finally discover the good life, hand in hand. Meanwhile we just have to tough it out and make the most of things. — Rupert Dreyfus

Directing has only increased my admiration and respect for what it is that actors do. — Eric Stoltz

The question is, how will you handle these challenges as you attempt to complete the quest or mission before you? Will you look at them as opportunities to grow and advance - to prove to yourself that you are capable of leveling up - or will you look at them as brick walls that halt your progress? It all comes down to your attitude and your strategy for attacking the obstacle. — Steve Kamb

Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

As we advance in life the circle of our pains enlarges, while that of our pleasures contracts. — Sophie Swetchine