I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the innocence and purity associated with sleep, equating the act of killing a child with killing a sleeping person.
Fernando Pessoa's quote explores the surreal and innocent nature of sleep, suggesting that in slumber, we return to a childlike state devoid of guilt or wrongdoing. He provocatively posits that even the most egregious individuals are stripped of their malevolence while they sleep, blurring the moral lines between innocence and guilt, and offering a profound reflection on the nature of life, morality, and the human condition.
In practice
This quote can be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of morality and innocence.
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.
On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
If they burn a book, have no worries. The book will feel NO pain so neither should you! True destruction of the Qur'an cannot be done with fire; it is destroyed when we fail to remember & practice its lessons in our daily lives. If this occurs, then it is ANOTHER fire that you should truly be concerned about!
But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
Death is staring too long into the burning sun and the relief of entering a cool, dark room.
I work a lot with blind people in my spare time outside of Unilever, and I count my blessings every day.
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