My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.

Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

bottom images madness ocean soul vacuum void water

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Without madness what is man
But a wholesome beast,
Postponed corpse that begets?

— Fernando Pessoa

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At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.

— Fernando Pessoa

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My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. [â€¦]. I'm two, and both keep their distance â€” Siamese twins that aren't attached.

— Fernando Pessoa

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All is worthwhile if the soul is not small.

— Fernando Pessoa

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My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

— Fernando Pessoa