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.

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 pleasingWhen you hold them in your handAnd look at them for a...

If I could take a bite of the whole worldAnd feel it on my palateI’d be more happy for a minute or so…But I don’t always want to be happy.Sometimes you have to beUnhappy to...

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)

Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of 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 lyingHas a reality so real even my back feels...

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...

Praise be to God I’m not good,And have the natural egotism of flowersAnd rivers following their bedPreoccupied without knowing itOnly with blooming and flowing.This is the only mission in the World,This—to exist clearly,And to know...

That lady has a piano.It’s nice, but it’s not the running of riversOr the murmuring trees make ..Who needs a piano?It’s better to have earsAnd love Nature.

Pensar incomoda como andar à chuvaQuando o vento cresce e parece que chove mais.

Something changed in part of reality — my knees and my hands.What science has knowledge for this?The blind man goes on his way and I don’t make any more gestures.It’s already not the same time,...

There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

Water’s water and that’s why it’s beautiful.

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 UniverseBecause I bring the Universe to itself.

What does this think about that?Nothing thinks about anything.Does the earth have consciousness of its stones and plants?If it did, it would be people. . .Why am I worrying about this?If I think about these...

And sometimes if I wantTo imagine I’m a lamb(Or a whole flockSpreading out all over the hillsideSo I can be a lot of happy things at the same time),It’s only because I feel what I...

That thing over there was more there than it’s there!Yes, sometimes I cry about the perfect body that doesn’t exist.But the perfect body is the bodiest body there can be,And the rest are the dreams...

Night doesn’t fall for my eyesBut my idea of the night is that it falls for my eyes.Beyond my thinking and having any thoughtsThe night falls concretelyAnd the shining of stars exists like it had...

The Tejo runs down from SpainAnd the Tejo goes into the sea in Portugal.Everybody knows that.But not many people know the river of my villageAnd where it comes fromAnd where it’s going.And so, because it...

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

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

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...

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...

It’s stranger than every strangenessAnd the dreams of all the poetsAnd the thoughts of all the philosophers,That things are really what they seem to beAnd there’s nothing to understand.

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

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...

Accept the universeAs the gods gave it to you.If the gods wanted to give you something elseThey’d have done it.If there are other matters and other worldsThere are.

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...

Yes, this is what my senses alone have learned:—Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

I’d like to have enough time and quietTo think about absolutely nothing,To not ever feel myself living,To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected.

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 meOr if I understand them,But I know the truth is in...

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

She’s a manner of speaking.Even the flowers don’t come back, or the green leaves.There are new flowers, new green leaves.There are other beautiful days.Nothing comes back, nothing repeats itself, because everything is real.

Let’s only care about the place where we are.There’s beauty enough in being here and not anywhere else.If there’s someone beyond the curve in the road,Let them worry about what’s past the curve in the...

Sometimes in the evening on Summer days,Even when there’s not a breeze at all, it seemsLike there’s a light breeze blowing for a minuteBut the trees are unmovingIn every leaf of their leavesAnd our feelings...

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

Yes: I exist inside my body.I’m not carrying the sun and the moon in my pocket.I don’t want to conquer worlds because I slept badly,And I don’t want to eat the world for breakfast because...

I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.

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

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

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...

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...

But if God is the trees and the flowersAnd 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...

A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy talesActs 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...

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

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...

I don’t bother with rhyme. RarelyAre two trees the same, one beside the other.I think and write like flowers have colorBut with less perfection in my way of expressing myselfBecause I lack the divine simplicityOf...

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...

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...

I’m a keeper of flocks.The flock is my thoughtsAnd my thoughts are all sensations.I think with my eyes and with my earsAnd with my hands and feetAnd with my nose and mouth.Thinking about a flower...