Pantheism Quotes

“What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“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 afterwards.
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, O Pastor Amoroso

“I’d like to have enough time and quiet
To think about absolutely nothing,
To not ever feel myself living,
To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“She’s a manner of speaking.
Even the flowers don’t come back, or the green leaves.
There are new flowers, new green leaves.
There are other beautiful days.
Nothing comes back, nothing repeats itself, because everything is real.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“I don’t regret anything I was before because I still am.
I only regret not having loved you.
Put your hands in mine
And let’s be quiet, surrounded by life.”
― Alberto Caeiro, O Pastor Amoroso

“Accept the universe
As the gods gave it to you.
If the gods wanted to give you something else
They’d have done it.

If there are other matters and other worlds
There are.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which nothing can be conceived," it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.”
― Daniel C. Dennett

“It’s stranger than every strangeness
And the dreams of all the poets
And the thoughts of all the philosophers,
That things are really what they seem to be
And there’s nothing to understand.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

“I'm one of my sensations.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“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 peacefully
Because everything is real and everything is right.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“If I could take a bite of the whole world
And feel it on my palate
I’d be more happy for a minute or so...
But I don’t always want to be happy.
Sometimes you have to be
Unhappy to be natural...

Not every day is sunny.
When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come.
So I take unhappiness with happiness
Naturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strange
That there are mountains and plains
And that there are cliffs and grass...

What you need is to be natural and calm
In happiness and in unhappiness,
To feel like someone seeing,
To think like someone walking,
And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies,
And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful...
That’s how it is and that’s how it should be...”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

“The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset.
But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset?”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

“And I find a happiness in the fact of accepting —
In the sublimely scientific and difficult fact of accepting the inevitable natural.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“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 Universe
Because I bring the Universe to itself.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

“When the sense of the earth unites with the sense of one's body, one becomes earth of the earth, a plant among plants, an animal born from the soil and fertilizing it. In this union, the body is confirmed in its pantheism.”
― Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

“whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Live, you say, in the present;
Live only in the present.

But I don’t want the present, I want reality;
I want things that exist, not time that measures them.

What is the present?
It’s something relative to the past and the future.
It’s a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing.
I only want reality, things without the present.

I don’t want to include time in my scheme.
I don’t want to think about things as present; I want to think of them as things.
I don’t want to separate them from themselves, treating them as present.

I shouldn’t even treat them as real.
I should treat them as nothing.

I should see them, only see them;
See them till I can’t think about them.

See them without time, without space,
To see, dispensing with everything but what you see.
And this is the science of seeing, which isn’t a science.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“O Love, divine Love, why do You lay siege to me?
In a frenzy of love for me, You find no rest.

From five sides You move against me,
Hearing, sight, taste, touch, and scent.
To come out is to be caught; I cannot hide from You.

If I come out through sight I see Love
Painted in every form and color,
Inviting me to come to You, to dwell in You.

If I leave through the door of hearing,
What I hear points only to You, Lord;
I cannot escape Love through this gage.

If I come out through taste, every flavor proclaims:
"Love, divine Love, hungering Love!
You have caught me on Your hook, for you want to reign in me."

If I leave through the door of scent
I sense You in all creation; You have caught me
And wounded me through that fragrance.

If I come out through the sense of touch
I find Your lineaments in every creature;
To try to flee from You is madness.

Love, I flee from You, afraid to give You my heart:
I see that You make me one with You,
I cease to be me and can no longer find myself.

If I see evil in a man or defect or temptation,
You fuse me with him, and make me suffer;
O Love without limits, who is it You love?

It is You, O Crucified Christ,
Who take possession of me,
Drawing me out of the sea to the shore;

There I suffer to see Your wounded heart.
Why did You endure the pain?
So that I might be healed.”
― Jacopone Da Todi, The God-Madness

“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 me
Or if I understand them,
But I know the truth is in them and in me
And in our common divinity
Of letting ourselves go and live on the Earth
And carrying us in our arms through the contented Seasons
And letting the wind sing us to sleep
And not have dreams in our sleep.”
― Alberto Caeiro

“Night doesn’t fall for my eyes
But my idea of the night is that it falls for my eyes.
Beyond my thinking and having any thoughts
The night falls concretely
And the shining of stars exists like it had weight.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“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 tomorrow
Will 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 Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“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.”
― Álvaro de Campos

“On a whitely cloudy day I get sad, almost afraid,
And I begin to meditate about problems I make up.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“I'm always talking to God about whether or not he exists - that's how I know I'm a theist.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy tales
Acts 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)”
― Alberto Caeiro

“If science wants to be truthful,
What science is more truthful than the science of things without science?
I close my eyes and the hard earth where I’m lying
Has a reality so real even my back feels it.
I don’t need reason — I have shoulderblades.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“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.”
― Álvaro de Campos

“The Amorous Shepherd is a fruitless interlude, but those few poems are among the world’s greatest love poems, because they’re love poems about love, not about being poems. The poet loves because he loves, not because love exists.”
― Álvaro de Campos