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.
CESARE PAVESELiving is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.
More Cesare Pavese Quotes
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The face of the night will be an old wound that reopens each evening, impassive and living. The distant silence will ache like a soul, mute, in the dark. We’ll speak to the night as it’s whispering softly.
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A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself.
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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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The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.
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The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.
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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
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Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.
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There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
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Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.
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We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God.
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We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
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There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.
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I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.
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Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
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The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
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Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.
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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 closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
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For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.
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Love is the cheapest of religions.
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Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
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We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.
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Will power is only the tensile strength of one’s own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.
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What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.
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It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.
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But here’s the worst part: the trick to life lies in hiding from those we hold most dear how much they mean to is; if not, we’d lose them.
CESARE PAVESE