Quotes about it-is-what-it-is

The amorous shepherd has lost his staff,And his sheep are straying on the hillside,And he didn’t even play the flute he brought to play because he was thinking so much.No one came to him or went away. He never found his staff again.Others, cursing at him, gathered his sheep for him.No one had loved him, in the end.When he got up from the hillside and the false truth, he saw everything:The great valleys full of the same green as always,The great distant mountains, more real than any feeling,All r

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)

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.

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 WorldThat it be anything that’s not the World.

Between 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 s

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

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 peacefullyBecause everything is real and everything is right.

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.

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)

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 else the whole rose would be here.

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 wholenessIs a sickness of our ideas.

The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset.But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset?

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 them and in meAnd in our common divinityOf letting ourselves go and live on the EarthAnd carrying us in our arms through the contented SeasonsAnd letting the wind sing us to sleepAnd not have dreams in our sleep.

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.

I'm one of my sensations.

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

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.

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 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 fall

It’s an already inside outside,The philosophers say it’s the soulBut it’s not the soul: it’s the animal or the man itselfIn its way of existing.

It’s the poet we love in Caeiro, not the philosopher. What we really get from these poems is a childlike sense of life, with all the direct materiality of the child’s mind, and all the vital spirituality of hope and increase that exist in the body and soul of nescient childhood. Caeiro’s work is a dawn that wakes us up and quickens us; a more that material, more than anti-spiritual dawn. It’s an abstract effect, pure vacuum, nothingness.

I consider a dream like I consider a shadow,” answered Caeiro, with his usual divine, unexpected promptitude. “A shadow is real, but it’s less real than a rock. A dream is real — if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a dream — but less real than a thing. That’s what being real is like.

Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

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 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)

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 how to do it without thinking about it.)

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 weight.

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 road,That’s what the road is to them.

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

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 men have,The myopia of someone who doesn’t look very much,

It’s stupid, but it’s human, and that’s how it is.

Do I believe a thing has limits!? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn’t have limits. Existence means there’s always something else, and so everything has limits. Why is it so hard to conceive that a thing is a thing, and that it isn’t always being some other thing that’s beyond it?”At that moment I felt in my bones not that I was talking to a man, but to another universe. I tried one last time, from another angle, which I felt compelled to consider legitimate.“Look, Caeiro... think about number

But what you’re calling poetry is what everything is. It’s not even poetry — it’s seeing. These materialists are blind. You told me they say space is infinite. Where do they see that in space?”And I, disconcerted: “But don’t you think of space as infinite? Can’t you conceive of space as infinite?”“I don’t conceive of anything as being infinite. How could I conceive of anything as being infinite?”“But, man,” I said, “Imagine space. Beyond that space is more space, and beyond that more, and then m

the Great Vaccination — the vaccination against the stupidity of the intelligentsia.

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

Nothing at all reminds us of something else when we pay attention to it.Each thing only reminds us of what it isAnd 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).

What is fascinating is that it is physical. You know, that's one thing about intellectuals, they've proved that you can be absolute brilliant and have no idea what's going on. But on the other hand, the body doesn't lie, as we now know. Nono, it'll be great, because all of those ph.Ds are in there, like, discussing modes of alienation, and we'll be in here quietly humping.

Nothing: 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.

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.

You 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.

You can't change the things you've done. It's now and the here on out you've got control of.

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 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.

And sorrows return, though we drown them with wine,Since the world can in no way answer our craving,I will loosen my hair tomorrow and take to a fishingboat.

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

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.

When you accept discomfort of whatever moment that you are in. The power of that surrender, that letting go of desiring to be in a different situation than the one your in.........will set you free from the hell of your unconscious.