Italo Svevo Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and... the third I can't remember.

Italo Svevo
Thus, after pursuing those images, I overtook them. Now I know that I invented them. But inventing is a creation, not a lie.

Italo Svevo
Everyone tends to remember the past with greater fervor as the present gains greater importance.

Italo Svevo
Whenever I look at a mountain I always expect it to turn into a volcano.

Italo Svevo
Present-day life is polluted at the roots. Man has put himself in the place of trees and animals and has polluted the air, has blocked free space. Worse can happen. The sad and active animal could discover other forces and press them into his service. There is a threat of this kind in the air. It will be followed by a great gain…in the number of humans. Every square meter will be occupied by a man. Who will cure us of the lack of air and of space?

Italo Svevo
One need only remind oneself of all that we expect from life to see how very strange it is, and to arrive at the conclusion that man has found his way into it by mistake and does not really belong there.

Italo Svevo
It is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent.

Italo Svevo
Wine is a great danger, especially because it doesn't bring truth to the surface. Anything but the truth, indeed: it reveals especially the past and forgotten history of the individual rather than his present wish; it capriciously flings into the light also all the half-baked ideas with which in a more or less recent period one has toyed and then forgotten.

Italo Svevo
Health doesn't analyze itself, nor does it look at itself in the mirror. Only we sick people know something about ourselves.

Italo Svevo
Life is neither ugly nor beautiful, but it's original!

Italo Svevo
A preached immorality is more to be punished than an immoral action. You arrive at murder through love or through hate; you propagandize murder only through wickedness.

Italo Svevo
Life is neither good nor bad; it is original.

Italo Svevo
Disease is a conviction, and I was born with that conviction.

Italo Svevo
He was more than willing to instruct me, and in my notebook he actually wrote in his own hand the three commandments he considered sufficient to make any firm prosper: 1. There's no need for a man to know how to work, but if he doesn't know how to make others work, he is doomed. (2) There is only one great regret: not having acted in one's own best interest. (3) In business, theory is useful, but it can be utilized only after the deal has been made.

Italo Svevo
You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.

Italo Svevo
When a man dies, he has too many other worries to allow any thinking about death.

Italo Svevo
Healthy love is the love that embraces a single, whole woman, including her character and her intelligence.

Italo Svevo
In the mind of a young man from a middle-class family, the concept of human life is associated with that of a career, and in early youth the career is that of Napoleon I.

Italo Svevo