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The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.

Cesare Pavese

You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday’s parties.
CESARE PAVESE

Costume Old Party Word Yourself
There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.
CESARE PAVESE

Day Feeling Forgiveness Himself Stupidity
No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.
CESARE PAVESE

Goodness Reason Suicide
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
Here’s the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.
CESARE PAVESE

Act Ambition Beyond Difficult Pass Suicide
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
But all years are stupid. It’s only when they’re over that they become interesting.
CESARE PAVESE

Interest Lost Stupidity Time Wisdom
Lessons are not given, they are taken.
CESARE PAVESE

Knowledge Lesson Wisdom
You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
CESARE PAVESE

Insult Man Refusal Suffering Yourself
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.
CESARE PAVESE

Born Complete Mad Perfection
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
Love is the cheapest of religions.
CESARE PAVESE

Cheap Love One Liner Religion
We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.
CESARE PAVESE

Commitment Failure Wrong
I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.
CESARE PAVESE

Company Evening Mirror Myself
Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other’s sight, but in their own.
CESARE PAVESE

Love Lover Naked Sight
It is not that things happen to each of us according to his fate, but that he interprets what has happened, if he has power to do so, according to his sense of his own destiny.
CESARE PAVESE

Action Destiny Fate Himself Reaction
Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.
CESARE PAVESE

Happiness Love Poetry Remember Share Writing
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
To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
CESARE PAVESE

Comfortable Cry Injustice Wrong Yourself
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
Love is desire for knowledge.
CESARE PAVESE

Desire Knowledge Love One Liner
Nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission.
CESARE PAVESE

Action Disappear Fall Quiet Submission Suicide
We never remember days, only moments.
CESARE PAVESE

Day Moments Remember
The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one’s own loneliness, how to communicate with others.
CESARE PAVESE

Break Communication Life Lonely Problem
To know the world, one must construct it.
CESARE PAVESE

Construction World
The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
CESARE PAVESE

Forget Life Memories Rich
Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it.
CESARE PAVESE

Money Oneself

The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.

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The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.

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