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Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

Cesare Pavese

Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our own destiny and we find peace.
CESARE PAVESE

Destiny Discover Experience Life Ourselves Peace Search
We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.
CESARE PAVESE

Goodness Thinking Work
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
There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.
CESARE PAVESE

Bored Exception Life Mercy
The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.
CESARE PAVESE

Art Believe Live Lying
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
There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
CESARE PAVESE

Alive Happiness Misery
Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
CESARE PAVESE

Born Complete Difference Perfection
All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.
CESARE PAVESE

Ambition Origin Sense Sin
I thought of how many places there are in the world that belong in this way to someone, who has it in his blood beyond anyone else’s understanding.
CESARE PAVESE

Blood Myself Place Thinking Understand World
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
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
We never remember days, only moments.
CESARE PAVESE

Day Moments Remember
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

Clear Conscience Spirit Suffering Thinking World
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
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
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 problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away.
CESARE PAVESE

Generation Interest Problem Solve
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
When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.
CESARE PAVESE

Author Dreams End Yourself
One must look for one thing only, to find many.
CESARE PAVESE

Finding Oneself Search
Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.
CESARE PAVESE

Human Imagination Poor Reality
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
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
For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.
CESARE PAVESE

Contemporary Existence History Woman
Love is the cheapest of religions.
CESARE PAVESE

Cheap Love One Liner Religion
Will power is only the tensile strength of one’s own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.
CESARE PAVESE

Power Single Strength Willing

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

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Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

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Popular Authors

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