"Life is all a dream"

“Now this man’s back is asleep. All of him walking in front of me at a speed equal to mine is asleep. He goes along unconsciously. He lives unconsciously. He sleeps, because we all sleep. Life is all a dream. No one knows what he does, no one knows what he wants, no one knows what he knows. We sleep our lives, eternal children of Destiny. For that reason I feel, if it’s true that I can think with this sensation, a shapeless and immense tenderness for all infantile humanity, for all sleeping social life, for all people, for all things.”

“All movements and intentions in life, from the simple life of the lungs to the building of cities and the defense of imperial frontiers – I consider them like a somnolence, things like dreams or resting, involuntarily spent in the interval between one reality and another, between one day and another day of the Absolute. And like someone abstractly maternal, I hover over the bad children as much as over the good ones, all together in the dream in which they are mine. I feel compassion with the generosity of an infinite thing.”

(Bernardo Soares / Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet. Trans. Alfred Mac Adam)