The collection / 73 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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73 results · Page 3 of 4Play this collection ▷

01Undated

I’d like to have enough time and quietTo think about absolutely nothing,To not ever feel myself living,To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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02Undated

On a whitely cloudy day I get sad, almost afraid,And I begin to meditate about problems I make up.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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03Undated

Nothing at all reminds us of something else when we pay attention to it.Each thing only reminds us of what it isAnd it’s only what nothing else is.The fact that it’s it separates it from every other thing.(Everything’s nothing without another thing that’s not it).

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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04Undated

I love flowers for being flowers, directly.And I love trees for being trees without my thought.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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05Undated

That thing over there was more there than it’s there!Yes, sometimes I cry about the perfect body that doesn’t exist.But the perfect body is the bodiest body there can be,And the rest are the dreams men have,The myopia of someone who doesn’t look very much,

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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06Undated

Let’s only care about the place where we are.There’s beauty enough in being here and not anywhere else.If there’s someone beyond the curve in the road,Let them worry about what’s past the curve in the road,That’s what the road is to them.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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07Undated

But if God is the flowers and the treesAnd the hills and the sun and the moonlight,Then I believe in him,Then I believe in him all the time,And my whole life is an oration and a mass,And a communion with my eyes and through my ears.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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08Undated

I’m a keeper of flocks.The flock is my thoughtsAnd my thoughts are all sensations.I think with my eyes and with my earsAnd with my hands and feetAnd with my nose and mouth.Thinking about a flower is seeing and smelling itAnd eating a piece of fruit is knowing its meaning.That’s why when on a hot dayI feel sad from liking it so much,And I throw myself lengthwise on the grassAnd shut my hot eyes,And feeling my whole body lying on reality,I know the truth and I’m happy.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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09Undated

And sometimes if I wantTo imagine I’m a lamb(Or a whole flockSpreading out all over the hillsideSo I can be a lot of happy things at the same time),It’s only because I feel what I write at sunset,Or when a cloud passes its hand over the lightAnd silence runs over the grass outside.When I sit and write poemsOr, walking along the roads or pathways,I write poems on the paper in my thoughts,I feel a staff in my handAnd see my silhouetteOn top of a knoll,Looking after my flock and seeing my ideas,Or looking after my ideas and seeing my flock,With a silly smile like someone who doesn’t understand what somebody’s sayingBut tries to pretend they do.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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10Undated

Let’s be simple and calm,Like brooks and trees,And God will love us by makingBeautiful things like the trees and brooks for us,And give us greenness in his spring,And a river for us to go to when we end...

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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11Undated

One day when God fell asleepAnd the Holy Ghost went off flying,He got into a box of miracles and stole three.With the first he made it so that no one would know he had run away.With the second he made himself a human boy forever.With the third he created a Christ eternally crucifiedAnd left him nailed to the cross that there is in HeavenWhere he’s used as a model for other crosses.Then he ran away to the sunAnd came down on the first ray he caught.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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12Undated

Nature never remembers, that’s why she’s beautiful.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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13Undated

I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either.Nobody goes faster than the legs they have.If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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14Undated

If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I’ve got it.I’m a mystic, but only in my body,My soul is simple and doesn’t think.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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15Undated

Sometimes in the evening on Summer days,Even when there’s not a breeze at all, it seemsLike there’s a light breeze blowing for a minuteBut the trees are unmovingIn every leaf of their leavesAnd our feelings have had an illusion,An illusion of what would please them...

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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16Undated

Yes, this is what my senses alone have learned:—Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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17Undated

Lightly, lightly, very lightly,A wind passes very lightlyAnd goes away, always very lightly.And I don’t know what I thinkAnd I don’t want to know.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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18Undated

The Tejo runs down from SpainAnd the Tejo goes into the sea in Portugal.Everybody knows that.But not many people know the river of my villageAnd where it comes fromAnd where it’s going.And so, because it belongs to less people,The river of my village is freer and greater.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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19Undated

Other times when I hear the wind blowI feel that just hearing the wind blow makes it worth being born.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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20Undated

I’m in no hurry. What for?The sun and moon aren’t in a hurry: they’re right.Hurrying is believing people can get past their legs,Or that, jumping, they can land past their shadow.No; I don’t know how to hurry.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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21Undated

She goes on with her beautiful hair and mouth like before,I go on like before, alone in the field.It’s like my head had been lowered,And if I think this, and raise my headAnd the golden sun dries the need to cry I can’t stop having.How vast the field and interior love... !I look, and I forget, like dryness where there was water and trees losing their leaves.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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22Undated

That lady has a piano.It’s nice, but it’s not the running of riversOr the murmuring trees make ..Who needs a piano?It’s better to have earsAnd love Nature.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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23Undated

I don’t bother with rhyme. RarelyAre two trees the same, one beside the other.I think and write like flowers have colorBut with less perfection in my way of expressing myselfBecause I lack the divine simplicityOf wholly being only my exterior.I see and I’m moved,Moved the way water runs when the ground is slopingAnd what I write is as natural as the rising wind...

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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24Undated

Water’s water and that’s why it’s beautiful.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

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