Fernando Pessoa

Portugal
13 Jun 1888 // 30 Nov 1935
Poet

Thoughts Live

If thou can do nothing but think good, or wish good to humanity, think it, wish it, for those thoughts of thine and those wishes will be not unavailing. Thoughts live more assuredly than the brain that bears them. Nothing, it is true, can die; but the brain will change one day to aught else; but thoughts will never change, for they belong to the region of the First and the Last whence all things come and to which they move. To that region the material one day shall revert; but the immaterial is already there.
Yet not only do thoughts live, but they work to some end by laws mighty and unknown.

Say not therefore that prayers are useless, for thou dost not understand the laws which bind the spirit of man. Cry, again do I say it, if thou can do no good to the unhappy, think good towards them, wish good for them, pray that good may come to them; in some way, known to thee or unknown, will those thoughts, wishes, prayers have effect.

Fernando Pessoa, in 'Manuscript'
Search

 

On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays