"It's not the cracked walls of my rented room, nor the shabby desks in the office where I work, nor the poverty of the same old downtown streets in between, which I've crossed and recrossed so many times they seem to have assumed the immobility of the irreparable - none of that is responsible for my frequent feeling of nausea over the squalor of daily life. It's the people who habitually surround me, the souls who know me through conversation and daily contact without knowing me at all - they're the ones who cause a salivary knot of physical disgust to form in my throat. It's the sordid monotony of their lives, outwardly parallel to my own, and their keen awareness that I'm their fellow man - that is what dresses me in a convict's clothes, places me in a jail cell, and makes me apocryphal and beggarly."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Fernando Pessoa, trans. Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet (2002), text 36,
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philosophical_pessimism
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Philosophical pessimism
352 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Philosophical pessimism →
Related Quotes
"One can regret not having done something and one can also regret having done something. Doubt, dread, and fear of dec…"
"If one finds it. If the meaning of life is to seek meaning in life, then to find meaning in life is to remain without…"
"Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever d…"
"Everything that is engenders, sooner or later, nightmares. Let us try, therefore, to invent something better than being."
"If everyone had seen through everything, if everyone had "understood," history would have ceased long since. But we a…"
"Above all, we cannot expect the state to make people happy. Even if it effectively protects the rights of everyone, i…"
"We laugh, but inept is our laughter, We should weep, and weep sore, Who are shattered like glass and thereafter Remol…"
"Consider the capacity of the human body for pleasure. Sometimes, it is pleasant to eat, to drink, to see, to touch, t…"
"Sadness, more than an emotion, is a discovery. It is the discovery that we have no power over the world, that we are …"
"The only thing the young should be taught is that there is virtually nothing to be hoped for from life. One dreams of…"