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There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

Cesare Pavese

We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.
CESARE PAVESE

Feeling Heart Ourselves Word
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
A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.
CESARE PAVESE

Creation Dreams End Intelligence Present
We like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest.
CESARE PAVESE

Rest Right Work
The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.
CESARE PAVESE

Effort Experience Future Past Skills Technique World Yourself
To know the world, one must construct it.
CESARE PAVESE

Construction World
When writing poetry, it is not that produces a bright idea, but the bright idea that kindles the fire of.
CESARE PAVESE

Bright Fire Ideas Poetry Production Writing
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
CESARE PAVESE

Artist Monk State
We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.
CESARE PAVESE

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

Costume Old Party Word Yourself
We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
CESARE PAVESE

Avoid Freedom Live Ourselves
The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.
CESARE PAVESE

Brutal Man Slow Time Willing
Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it.
CESARE PAVESE

Money Oneself
A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man – the one he used to be.
CESARE PAVESE

Boy Growth Himself Man Philosophy Wisdom Youth
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
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
Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
CESARE PAVESE

Activity Time
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
If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.
CESARE PAVESE

Fear Jealous Light Selfish Travel Yourself
You’ve got to understand life, understand it when you’re young.
CESARE PAVESE

Life Understand Young Yourself
The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.
CESARE PAVESE

Art Believe Live Lying
You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
CESARE PAVESE

Insult Man Refusal Suffering Yourself
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
CESARE PAVESE

Drop End Life Party
Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.
CESARE PAVESE

Death Furious Health Man Point Yourself
I am the captain of my destiny, I do not abandon the ship in hard times, But, I do have sense enough not to go down with the ship.
CESARE PAVESE

Abandonment Captain Destiny Enough Hard Time Myself
The 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

Account Act Private Remark Revenge Yourself

There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

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There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

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