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 reality, with the sky and the air and the fields that exist, is present.(And once again the air, that he’d missed for so long, entered coolly into his lungs)And he felt that the air was opening again, but with pain, a liberty in his chest.(7/10/1930)

— Alberto Caeiro

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

— Alberto Caeiro

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.

— Alberto Caeiro

There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

— Alberto Caeiro

The river of my village doesn’t make you think about anything. When you’re at its bank you’re only at its bank.

— Alberto Caeiro

The Tojo runs down from Spain And the Tojo goes into the sea in Portugal. Everybody knows that. But not many people know the river of my village And where it comes from And where it’s going. And so, because it belongs to fewer people, The river of my village is freer and greater.

— Alberto Caeiro

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

— Alberto Caeiro

To love is to think. And I almost forget to feel only from thinking about her. I don’t know what I want at all, even from her, and I don’t think about anything but her. I have a great animated distraction. When I want to meet her, I almost feel like not meeting her, So I don’t have to leave her afterward. And I prefer thinking about her, because it’s like I’m afraid of her. I don’t know what I want at all, and I don’t want to know what I want. All I want to do is think about her. I’m asking nothing of nobody, not even her, except to think.

— Alberto Caeiro

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

— Alberto Caeiro

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

— Alberto Caeiro