欧宝娱乐

“To understand, I destroyed myself. To understand is to forget about loving. I know nothing more simultaneously false and telling than the statement by Leonardo da Vinci that we cannot love or hate something until we鈥檝e understood it.

Solitude devastates me; company oppresses me. The presence of another person derails my thoughts; I dream of the other鈥檚 presence with a strange absent-mindedness that no amount of my analytical scrutiny can define.
Isolation has carved me in its image and likeness. The presence of another person 鈥� of any person whatsoever 鈥� instantly slows down my thinking, and while for a normal man contact with others is a stimulus to spoken expression and wit, for me it is a counterstimulus, if this compound word be linguistically permissible. When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Yes, talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial, and in them intelligence gleams like an image in a mirror.

The mere thought of having to enter into contact with someone else makes me nervous. A simple invitation to have dinner with a friend produces an anguish in me that鈥檚 hard to define. The idea of any social obligation whatsoever 鈥� attending a funeral, dealing with someone about an office matter, going to the station to wait for someone I know or don鈥檛 know 鈥� the very idea disturbs my thoughts for an entire day, and sometimes I even start worrying the night before, so that I sleep badly. When it takes place, the dreaded encounter is utterly insignificant, justifying none of my anxiety, but the next time is no different: I never learn to learn.

鈥楳y habits are of solitude, not of men.鈥� I don鈥檛 know if it was Rousseau or Senancour who said this. But it was some mind of my species, it being perhaps too much to say of my race.”
― Fernando Pessoa