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Cesare Pavese Quotes
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Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.
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I was happy enough; I knew that during the night the whole city might go up in flames and all its people be killed, but the ravines, houses, and footpaths would wake in the morning calm and unchanged.
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The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.
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Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live.
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Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there?
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It had to happen to you, to concentrate your whole life on one point, and then discover that you can do anything except live at that point.
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To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
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Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life. Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone.
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Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?
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The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else's.
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No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the example of the world around him. And a man, no matter how conservative, shows his own worth by his personal deviation from that pattern.
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A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.
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There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.
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A work settles nothing, just as the labor of a whole generation settles nothing. Sons, and the morrow, always start afresh.
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There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.
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We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.
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Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our own destiny and we find peace.
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It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it.
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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
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When a man mourns for someone who has played him false, it is not for love of her, but for his own humiliation at not having deserved her trust.
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In fact a man in love or one consumed with hatred creates symbols for himself, as a superstitious man does, from a passion of conferring uniqueness on things or persons. A man who knows nothing of symbols is one of Dante's sluggards. This is why art mirrors itself in primitive rites or strong passions, seeking for symbols, revolving round the primitive taste for savagery, for what is irrational (blood and sex).
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For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.
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No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Cesare Pavese
Born:
September 9, 1908
Died:
August 27, 1950
(aged 41)
Bio:
Cesare Pavese was an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator. He is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country.
Known for:
The Moon and the Bonfire (1950)
Hard Labor (1936)
The House on the Hill (1948)
Among Women Only
The Devil in the Hills (1948)
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