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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

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
We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God.
CESARE PAVESE

Care God Love People Religion
Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
CESARE PAVESE

Occupation Patient Terrible
All our “most sacred affections ” are merely prosaic habit.
CESARE PAVESE

Affection Habit Scared
The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
CESARE PAVESE

Forget Life Memories Rich
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 like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest.
CESARE PAVESE

Rest Right Work
What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.
CESARE PAVESE

Access Desire Oneself Possession Woman Worth
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
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
The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.
CESARE PAVESE

Art Believe Live Lying Recognition
We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
CESARE PAVESE

Avoid Freedom Live Ourselves
Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
CESARE PAVESE

Activity Time
Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man.
CESARE PAVESE

Enough Fools Fortune Intelligence Man
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
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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