I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and blood’ describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid out on the butcher’s marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive.
Interpretation
The quote reflects how fictional characters can evoke deeper emotional connections than some real people.
Fernando Pessoa expresses the idea that the connections we forge with fictional characters and artistic representations can often be more profound than those we have with real individuals in our lives. He critiques the superficiality of human relationships, likening them to mere physical beings devoid of true emotional substance, suggesting that our bonds with imaginative creations can offer richer experiences than those with 'flesh and blood' humans.
In practice
In a speech about the power of literature, one might reference this quote to illustrate the emotional depth found in storytelling.
I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.
It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.
I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.
Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn't accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else's insistence or someone else's whim or convenience.
The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.
Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, allow it to permeate his whole being, accept all its consequences, and not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the consequence.
Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy.
Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.