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We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.

Cesare Pavese

But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
CESARE PAVESE

Purpose Reality Service Suffering Truth
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

Enjoyment Life Mad Ourselves People Suffering True
The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
CESARE PAVESE

Beginning Heart Night Suffering
Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.
CESARE PAVESE

Hands Mouth Ready Willing
Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.
CESARE PAVESE

Luxury Pay World
The man who cannot live with charity, sharing other men’s pain, is punished by feeling his own with intolerable anguish.
CESARE PAVESE

Angry Charity Himself Live Man Pain Share
Lessons are not given, they are taken.
CESARE PAVESE

Knowledge Lesson Wisdom
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
CESARE PAVESE

Artist Monk State
What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.
CESARE PAVESE

Silence Suffering
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.
CESARE PAVESE

Darkness Evening Face Night Old Soft Talk Whisper Wound
Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.
CESARE PAVESE

Discussion Logic Philosophy Woman
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?
CESARE PAVESE

Love Man Operation Relationship True Wake Up
A corpse is what’s left after waking too often.
CESARE PAVESE

Body Death Wake
The only joy in the world is to begin.
CESARE PAVESE

Beginning Job One Liner World
Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
CESARE PAVESE

Activity Time
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

Beyond Lying Ocean Reach World

We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.

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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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Popular Authors

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