My misfortune - a misfortune for my own happiness - lay in my imagining myself from outside. I saw myself as others saw me and I began to despise myself, not because I recognized in myself qualities deserving of scorn, but because I saw myself as others saw me and felt the kind of scorn they would feel for me. I suffered the humiliation of knowing myself.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (via pocket-full-of-stones)
