Quotes by "Alberto Caeiro"

I don’t have a philosophy: I have senses... If I talk about Nature, it’s not because I know what it is, But because I love it, and that’s why I love it, Because when you love you never know what you love, Or why you love, or what love is. Loving is eternal innocence, And the only innocence is not thinking.

It’s an already inside outside, The philosophers say it’s the soul But it’s not the soul: it’s the animal or the man itself In its way of existing.

What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, And Spring came the day after tomorrow, I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow. If that’s its time, when else should it come? I like it that everything is real and everything is right; And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it. And so, if I die now, I die peacefully Because everything is real and everything is right.

I'm one of my sensations.

Accept the universe As the gods gave it to you. If the gods wanted to give you something else They’d have done it. If there are other matters and other worlds There are.

Even so, I’m somebody. I’m the Discoverer of Nature. I’m the Argonaut of true sensations. I bring a new Universe to the Universe Because I bring the Universe to itself.

And since today’s all there is for now, that’s everything. Who knows if I’ll be dead the day after tomorrow? If I’m dead the day after tomorrow, the thunderstorm day after tomorrow Will be another thunderstorm than if I hadn’t died. Of course I know thunderstorms don’t fall because I see them, But if I weren’t in the world, The world would be different — There would be me the less — And the thunderstorm would fall on a different world and would be another thunderstorm. No matter what happens, what’s falling is what’ll be falling when it falls. (7/10/1930)

If I could take a bite of the whole world And feel it on my palate I’d be more happy for a minute or so... But I don’t always want to be happy. Sometimes you have to be Unhappy to be natural... Not every day is sunny. When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come. So I take unhappiness with happiness Naturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strange That there are mountains and plains And that there are cliffs and grass... What you need is to be natural and calm In happiness and in unhappiness, To feel like someone seeing, To think like someone walking, And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies, And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful... That’s how it is and that’s how it should be...

The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset. But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset?

Live, you say, in the present; Live only in the present. But I don’t want the present, I want reality; I want things that exist, not time that measures them. What is the present? It’s something relative to the past and the future. It’s a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing. I only want reality, things without the present. I don’t want to include time in my scheme. I don’t want to think about things as present; I want to think of them as things. I don’t want to separate them from themselves, treating them as present. I shouldn’t even treat them as real. I should treat them as nothing. I should see them, only see them; See them till I can’t think about them. See them without time, without space, To see, dispensing with everything but what you see. And this is the science of seeing, which isn’t a science.

There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on; And the road didn’t become more beautiful or even more ugly. That’s human action on the outside world. We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget; And the sun is always punctual every day. (5/7/14)

Night doesn’t fall for my eyes But my idea of the night is that it falls for my eyes. Beyond my thinking and having any thoughts The night falls concretely And the shining of stars exists like it had weight.

Also at times, on the surface of streams, Water?bubbles form And grow and burst And have no meaning at all Except that they’re water?bubbles Growing and bursting.

I don’t always feel what I know I should feel. My thought crosses the river I swim very slowly Because the suit men made it wear weighs it down.

There are no roses in my yard: what wind brought you? But I suddenly come from far away. I was sick for a moment. No wind whatsoever brought you now. Now you’re here. What you were isn’t you, or else the whole rose would be here.

All beings exist and nothing else And that’s why they’re called beings

And I find a happiness in the fact of accepting — In the sublimely scientific and difficult fact of accepting the inevitable natural.

Things don’t have significance: they only have existence. Things are the only hidden meaning of things.