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A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.

Cesare Pavese

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
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 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.
CESARE PAVESE

Born Love Thinking World
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
CESARE PAVESE

Artist Monk State
The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.
CESARE PAVESE

Brutal Man Slow Time Willing
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.
CESARE PAVESE

Addition Complication Live Mistake Right Work
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
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 PAVESE

Action Fools Himself Man Practice
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
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
No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.
CESARE PAVESE

Goodness Reason Suicide
We like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest.
CESARE PAVESE

Rest Right Work
Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.
CESARE PAVESE

Death Disturb Repose
It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it.
CESARE PAVESE

Enjoyment Happiness Obsession Oneself
To know the world, one must construct it.
CESARE PAVESE

Construction World
Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time.
CESARE PAVESE

Memories Remember Reveal Time

A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.

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A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.

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Popular Authors

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