Best 70 quotes of Alberto Caeiro on MyQuotes

A espantosa realidade das coisas É a minha descoberta de todos os dias. Cada coisa é o que é, E é difícil explicar a alguém quanto isso me alegra, E quanto isso me basta. Basta existir para se ser completo.

A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy tales Acts like a sick god, but like a god. Because even though he affirms that what doesn’t exist exists, He knows things exist, that he exists, He knows existing exists and doesn’t explain itself, And he knows there’s no reason at all for anything to exist. He knows being is the point. All he doesn’t know is that thought isn’t the point. (10/1/1917)

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

All the evil in the world comes from us bothering with each other, Wanting to do good, wanting to do evil. Our soul and the sky and the earth are enough for us. To want more is to lose this, and be unhappy.

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.

And he feels hurt when he hears about wars, And commerce, and the ships leaving Their smoke on the high seas. Because he knows all of this lacks the truth A flower has in its blooming And which moves with the sunlight Changing the hills and valleys

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

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)

And sometimes if I want To imagine I’m a lamb (Or a whole flock Spreading out all over the hillside So I can be a lot of happy things at the same time), It’s only because I feel what I write at sunset, Or when a cloud passes its hand over the light And silence runs over the grass outside. When I sit and write poems Or, walking along the roads or pathways, I write poems on the paper in my thoughts, I feel a staff in my hand And see my silhouette On top of a knoll, Looking after my flock and seeing my ideas, Or looking after my ideas and seeing my flock, With a silly smile like someone who doesn’t understand what somebody’s saying But tries to pretend they do.

A row of trees far away, there on the hillside. But what is it, a row of trees? It’s just trees. Row and the plural trees aren’t things, they’re names.

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)

Between what i see in a field and what I see in another field There passes for a moment the figure of a man. His steps go with “him” in the same reality, But I look at him and them, and they’re two things: The “man” goes walking with his ideas, false and foreign, And his steps go with the ancient system that makes legs walk. I see him from a distance without any opinion at all. How perfect that he is in him what he is — his body, His true reality which doesn’t have desires or hopes, But muscles and the sure and impersonal way of using them.

But if God is the flowers and the trees And the hills and the sun and the moonlight, Then I believe in him, Then I believe in him all the time, And my whole life is an oration and a mass, And a communion with my eyes and through my ears.

But if God is the trees and the flowers And the hills and the moonlight and the sun, Why should I call him God? I call him flowers and trees and hills and sun and moonlight; Because if he made himself for me to see As the sun and moonlight and flowers and trees and hills, If he appears to me as trees and hills And moonlight and sun and flowers, It’s because he wants me to know him As trees and hills and flowers and moonlight and sun. And that’s why I obey him, (What more do I know about God than God knows about himself?), I obey him by living, spontaneously, Like someone opening his eyes and seeing, And I call him moonlight and sun and flowers and trees and hills, And I love him without thinking about him, And I think him by seeing and hearing, And I walk with him all the time.

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.

Everything’s different from us. That’s why everything exists.

He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others! He’s stupid if he doesn’t know other people’s unhappiness is theirs, And isn’t cured from the outside, Because suffering isn’t like running out of ink, Or a trunk not having iron bands! There being injustice is like there being death.

He’s taught me everything. He taught me how to look at things. He shows me everything there is in flowers. He shows me how stones are pleasing When you hold them in your hand And look at them for a while.

I don’t know what understanding myself is. I don’t look inside. I don’t believe I exist behind myself.

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.

I don’t bother with rhyme. Rarely Are two trees the same, one beside the other. I think and write like flowers have color But with less perfection in my way of expressing myself Because I lack the divine simplicity Of wholly being only my exterior. I see and I’m moved, Moved the way water runs when the ground is sloping And what I write is as natural as the rising wind...

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.

I don’t know how to talk because I’m feeling. I’m listening to my voice as if it were someone else’s, And my voice is speaking about her as if she were speaking. She has hair as blond as yellow wheat in the sun, And when she speaks her mouth says things that aren’t words. She laughs, and her teeth are as clean as stones in a river.

I don’t regret anything I was before because I still am. I only regret not having loved you. Put your hands in mine And let’s be quiet, surrounded by life.

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...

If I die very young, hear this: I was never anything but a kid playing. I was a heathen like the sun and the water, I had the universal religion only people don’t have. I was happy because I didn’t ask for anything at all, Or tried to find anything, And I didn’t find any more explanation Than the word explanation having no meaning at all.

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.

If I talk about her like she’s a being It’s because talking about her I need to use the language of men Which gives personality to things, And imposes a name on things.

If science wants to be truthful, What science is more truthful than the science of things without science? I close my eyes and the hard earth where I’m lying Has a reality so real even my back feels it. I don’t need reason — I have shoulderblades.

If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I’ve got it. I’m a mystic, but only in my body, My soul is simple and doesn’t think.

I love flowers for being flowers, directly. And I love trees for being trees without my thought.

I’m a keeper of flocks. The flock is my thoughts And my thoughts are all sensations. I think with my eyes and with my ears And with my hands and feet And with my nose and mouth. Thinking about a flower is seeing and smelling it And eating a piece of fruit is knowing its meaning. That’s why when on a hot day I feel sad from liking it so much, And I throw myself lengthwise on the grass And shut my hot eyes, And feeling my whole body lying on reality, I know the truth and I’m happy.

I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either. Nobody goes faster than the legs they have. If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant. (6/20/1919)

I’m in no hurry. What for? The sun and moon aren’t in a hurry: they’re right. Hurrying is believing people can get past their legs, Or that, jumping, they can land past their shadow. No; I don’t know how to hurry.

I pass and I stay, like the Universe.

I saw that there is no Nature, That Nature doesn’t exist, That there are hills, valleys, plains, That there are trees, flowers, weeds, That there are rivers and stones, But there is not a whole these belong to, That a real and true wholeness Is a sickness of our ideas.

I think about this, not like someone thinking, but like someone breathing, And I look at flowers and I smile... I don’t know if they understand me Or if I understand them, But I know the truth is in them and in me And in our common divinity Of letting ourselves go and live on the Earth And carrying us in our arms through the contented Seasons And letting the wind sing us to sleep And not have dreams in our sleep.

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.

It’s stranger than every strangeness And the dreams of all the poets And the thoughts of all the philosophers, That things are really what they seem to be And there’s nothing to understand.

I was born subject like others to errors and defects, But never to the error of wanting to understand too much, Never to the error of wanting to understand only with the intellect.. Never to the defect of demanding of the World That it be anything that’s not the World.

I was never a keeper of sheep

Let’s be simple and calm, Like brooks and trees, And God will love us by making Beautiful things like the trees and brooks for us, And give us greenness in his spring, And a river for us to go to when we end...

Lightly, lightly, very lightly, A wind passes very lightly And goes away, always very lightly. And I don’t know what I think And I don’t want to know.

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.

Nature never remembers, that’s why she’s beautiful.

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.

Nothing at all reminds us of something else when we pay attention to it. Each thing only reminds us of what it is And it’s only what nothing else is. The fact that it’s it separates it from every other thing. (Everything’s nothing without another thing that’s not it).

Now I sense the perfume of flowers like seeing a new thing. I know they smell just as well as I know I existed. They’re things known from the outside. But now I know with my breathing from the back of my head.

On a whitely cloudy day I get sad, almost afraid, And I begin to meditate about problems I make up.

One day when God fell asleep And the Holy Ghost went off flying, He got into a box of miracles and stole three. With the first he made it so that no one would know he had run away. With the second he made himself a human boy forever. With the third he created a Christ eternally crucified And left him nailed to the cross that there is in Heaven Where he’s used as a model for other crosses. Then he ran away to the sun And came down on the first ray he caught.