Cesare Pavese Quotes

99 Sourced Quotes

The man who cannot live with charity, sharing other men's pain, is punished by feeling his own with intolerable anguish.

Cesare Pavese
You wait for nothing if not for the word that will burst from the deep like a fruit among branches.

Cesare Pavese
In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.

Cesare Pavese
I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.

Cesare Pavese
What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.

Cesare Pavese
Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.

Cesare Pavese
Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.

Cesare Pavese
The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.

Cesare Pavese
Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own.

Cesare Pavese
Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven.

Cesare Pavese
What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.

Cesare Pavese
We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.

Cesare Pavese
Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always.

Cesare Pavese
Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.

Cesare Pavese
But all years are stupid. It's only when they're over that they become interesting.

Cesare Pavese
The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.

Cesare Pavese
The girls are all giggling, then one girl suddenly remembers the wild goat. Up there, on the hilltop, in the woods and rocky ravines, the peasants saw him butting his head against the trees, looking for the nannies. He's gone wild, and the reason why is this: if you don't make an animal work, if you keep him only for stud, he likes to hurt, he kills.

Cesare Pavese
If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more? No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves.

Cesare Pavese
How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?

Cesare Pavese
Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.

Cesare Pavese
One doesn't remember the days, but rather the fleeting seconds.

Cesare Pavese
Don't you know that what happens to you once always happens again? You always react in the same way to the same thing. It's no accident when you make a mess. Then you do it again. It's called destiny.

Cesare Pavese
I thought of how many places there are in the world that belong in this way to someone, who has it in his blood beyond anyone else's understanding.

Cesare Pavese
A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.

Cesare Pavese
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.

Cesare Pavese
Literature is a defence against the attacks of life. It says to life: 'You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.'

Cesare Pavese
There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

Cesare Pavese
There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.

Cesare Pavese
Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

Cesare Pavese
Woman gives herself as a prize to the weak and as a prop to the strong and no man ever has what he should.

Cesare Pavese