There's a tiredness of abstract inteligence, and it's the most horrible of tirednesses. It doesn't weight on you like the tiredness of the body, nor does it worry you like the tiredness of knowledge and emotion. It's a weightiness of the conscience of the world, an inability of the soul to breathe.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the exhaustion brought about by deep awareness and understanding of the world.
Fernando Pessoa articulates a unique perspective on fatigue, distinguishing it from physical or emotional tiredness. He suggests that the weariness stemming from abstract intelligence and philosophical contemplation is particularly profound, as it arises from a heavy conscience and the weight of existential awareness, inhibiting one's ability to find peace and breathe freely in the world.
In practice
In a discussion about the challenges of intellectual pursuits, this quote can underscore how deep thinking can lead to existential fatigue.
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.
Where it gets weird is that nowadays there are millions of people on this earth who call themselves followers of Jesus, but their lives look nothing like His, and they're not obeying the things that He called them to do.
A people are free in proportion as they form their own opinions.
You say somebody’s guilty, everybody believes you. You say they’re innocent, nobody cares.
Sporadic and shallow dipping in the doctrine of Christ and partial participation in His restored Church cannot produce the spiritual transformation that enables us to walk in a newness of life. Rather, fidelity to covenants, constancy of commitment, and offering our whole soul unto God are required if we are to receive the blessings of eternity.
I don't want to be immortal through my works. I want to be immortal by not dying.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
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