The outside world exists like an actor on a stage: it’s there but it’s pretending to be something else.
…
– Mask, Ferdinand Khnopff, c.1897
Someone, more free or accursed than the rest of us, suddenly sees (though even he only sees it rarely) that everything we are is what we are not, that we deceive ourselves about what is certain and are wrong about what we judge to be right. And this individual, who for one brief moment sees the universe naked, creates a philosophy or dreams a religion, and the philosophy spreads and the religion grows and those who believe in the philosophy wear it like an invisible garment, and those who believe in the religion put it on like a mask they then forget they are wearing.
– Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, pp. 236-237
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