## Metadata - Author: [[Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith, and RICHARD Zenith]] - Full Title: The Book of Disquiet - Category: #books ## Highlights - I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me – this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we’re mean-hearted but because we don’t feel like unbuttoning our coat. ([Location 724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0049U4IFA&location=724)) - I have a tender spot – tender to the point of tears – for my ledgers in which I keep other people’s accounts, for the old inkstand I use, for the hunched back of Sérgio, who draws up invoices a little beyond where I sit. I love all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love, and perhaps also because nothing is worth a human soul’s love, and so it’s all the same – should we feel the urge to give it – whether the recipient be the diminutive form of my inkstand or the vast indifference of the stars. ([Location 758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0049U4IFA&location=758)) - We never know self-realization. We are two abysses – a well staring at the sky. ([Location 800](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0049U4IFA&location=800)) - To live is to crochet according to a pattern we were given. But while doing it the mind is at liberty, and all enchanted princes can stroll in their parks between one and another plunge of the hooked ivory needle. Needlework of things… Intervals… Nothing… ([Location 813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0049U4IFA&location=813)) - Besides, what can I expect from myself? My sensations in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling… A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained… A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child… ([Location 816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0049U4IFA&location=816)) - We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbour who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life. ([Location 829](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0049U4IFA&location=829)) - Perhaps my destiny is to remain forever a bookkeeper, with poetry or literature as a butterfly that alights on my head, making me look ridiculous to the extent it looks beautiful. ([Location 864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0049U4IFA&location=864)) - Whenever I’ve tried to free my life from a set of the circumstances that continuously oppress it, I’ve been instantly surrounded by other circumstances of the same order, as if the inscrutable web of creation were irrevocably at odds with me. I yank from my neck a hand that was choking me, and I see that my own hand is tied to a noose that fell around my neck when I freed it from the stranger’s hand. When I gingerly remove the noose, it’s with my own hands that I nearly strangle myself. ([Location 885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0049U4IFA&location=885)) - Whether or not they exist, we’re slaves to the gods. ([Location 890](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0049U4IFA&location=890))