Fernando Pessoa Quotes

Your brain is cooked when you write hard for three or four hours.

There's a tiredness of abstract inteligence, and it's the most horrible of tirednesses. It doesn't weight on you like the tiredness of the body, nor does it worry you like the tiredness of knowledge and emotion. It's a weightiness of the conscience of the world, an inability of the soul to breathe.

When a man's mind rides faster than his horse can gallop they quickly both tire.

Thinking very hard about the same problem for several hours can produce a severe fatigue, close to a breakdown. I never really experienced a breakdown, but have felt "strange inside" two or three times during my life.

The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise. Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where "I admire" is but a synonyme for "I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it ," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!

I don’t want to start thinking again. Not like I have this last week. I can’t think again. Not ever again.

I find that in the course of the day when I'm writing, after three or four hours of intense work, I have a splitting headache, and I have to stop. Because the involvement, which is both creative and self-critical, is so intense that I've got to stop doing it.

Thinking is to me the greatest fatigue in the world.

Like most early enthusiasts, I always thought the way the Internet encouraged multitasking made users less vulnerable to manipulation, while simultaneously exploiting even more of our brain's capacity than before. Apparently not.

Sometimes my mind boggles. It's so deep my mind actually boggles.

A lot of times, fighters get not only physically tired but mentally exhausted. It's like a chess match - you're thinking of offense and defense at the same time. It's almost exhausting to think about it. After a while, you just go, 'I'll move my pawn.' A lot of times in fights, people get exhausted, and they're just sick of trying to focus on it.

It can be a little distressing to have to overintellectualize yourself.

Sometimes I feel like there are just too many things weighing on my mind at once, and I can't control my thoughts or even my body at times.

Sadly, I haven't had a brain cell since I had children.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

I have an overactive brain, and as a result of that, I can really get in my own mind. So I like to try and exercise it to the point of exhaustion.

It wears on your soul when you take on the mental state of a dark character.

To say I am not mentally tired in ways and exhausted in ways would be a lie.

My capacity to feel fear has worn out, as if it's a muscle that can do no more.

It seems like I'm thinking 400 hours a day; that's kind of how it feels.

A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using and tiring it, just in the same way he can wear out the elbows of his coat.

[...]It is as if after surviving so much, there was no longer reason to survive.

Thinking is harder work than hard work.

To most people, nothing is more troublesome than the effort of thinking.

It would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns...It goes, it goes ... and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I.