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Lessons are not given, they are taken.

Cesare Pavese

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.
CESARE PAVESE

Greatness Happiness Important Intensity Love Lover
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

Hide Life Lose People Trick Worst
A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.
CESARE PAVESE

Action Decision Reaction Repeat Result Time
All our “most sacred affections ” are merely prosaic habit.
CESARE PAVESE

Affection Habit Scared
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.
CESARE PAVESE

Enemy Generosity Man Revenge Yourself
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 PAVESE

Continue Ego Live Reason Thinking
There is something indecent in words .
CESARE PAVESE

Decent Word
Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
CESARE PAVESE

Absence Life Smoking
We want Realism’s wealth of experience and Symbolism’s depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.
CESARE PAVESE

Balance Deep Feeling Opposite Problem Reality Wealth
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

Insecurity Man Ready Sacrifice Sick Yourself
The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.
CESARE PAVESE

Activity Fruit Personality Search
The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment.
CESARE PAVESE

Alive Beginning Goodness Job Moments World
Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
CESARE PAVESE

Born Complete Difference Perfection
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

Himself Strong Weakness Woman
A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.
CESARE PAVESE

Complete Man Success Transcendence Work
One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.
CESARE PAVESE

Kill Love Naked Nothing Vulnerable Woman

Lessons are not given, they are taken.

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Lessons are not given, they are taken.

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