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You’ve got to understand life, understand it when you’re young.

Cesare Pavese

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

Affection Habit Scared
Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.
CESARE PAVESE

Death Disturb Repose
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
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
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
We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.
CESARE PAVESE

Commitment Failure Wrong
I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.
CESARE PAVESE

Company Evening Mirror Myself
Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.
CESARE PAVESE

Luxury Pay World
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
Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
CESARE PAVESE

Activity Time
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
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
CESARE PAVESE

Drop End Life Party
A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.
CESARE PAVESE

Complete Man Success Transcendence Work
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
The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.
CESARE PAVESE

Descend Escape Sound

You’ve got to understand life, understand it when you’re young.

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You’ve got to understand life, understand it when you’re young.

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