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.
CESARE PAVESEThe 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.
CESARE PAVESENowadays, 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 PAVESEAll our “most sacred affections ” are merely prosaic habit.
CESARE PAVESETo avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
CESARE PAVESEThe only joy in the world is to begin.
CESARE PAVESEIt’s pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone.
CESARE PAVESEIdleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
CESARE PAVESEPerfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.
CESARE PAVESEThe 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 PAVESEIt 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 PAVESEWill power is only the tensile strength of one’s own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.
CESARE PAVESEWe can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.
CESARE PAVESEThe only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.
CESARE PAVESENot believing in anything is also a religion .
CESARE PAVESEWhat is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.
CESARE PAVESEThe act the act must not be a revenge. It must be a calm, weary renunciation, a closing of accounts, a private, rhythmic deed. The last remark.
CESARE PAVESE