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.
— Alberto CaeiroBetween what I see in a field and what I see in another fieldThere 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.
— Alberto CaeiroYou tell me I have to crush a field of babies to keep breathing? Sure. You say people who rely on me aren't going to live unless I turn someone's head into a bowl of gravy? I'm there. I don't feel bad about it. I don't think about it. It just is what it is. It's survival.
— Robert KirkmanAccept 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.
— Alberto CaeiroAnd 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 tomorrowWill 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).
— Alberto CaeiroWhat comes, when it comes, will be what it is.
— Alberto CaeiroI love flowers for being flowers, directly.And I love trees for being trees without my thought.
— Alberto CaeiroI’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.
— Alberto CaeiroNothing: a landscape, a glass of wine, a little loveless love, and the vague sadness caused by our understanding nothing and having lost the little we're given.
— Álvaro de CamposI suddenly asked my master Caeiro, “Are you at peace with yourself?” and he answered, “No, I’m at peace.” It was like the voice of the earth, which is everything and no one.
— Álvaro de Campos