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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

Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
CESARE PAVESE

Born Complete Difference Perfection
But all years are stupid. It’s only when they’re over that they become interesting.
CESARE PAVESE

Interest Lost Stupidity Time Wisdom
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
We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.
CESARE PAVESE

Goodness Thinking Work
I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.
CESARE PAVESE

Company Evening Mirror Myself
The real affliction of old age is remorse.
CESARE PAVESE

Affliction Age Old Reality
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
You’ve got to understand life, understand it when you’re young.
CESARE PAVESE

Life Understand Young Yourself
Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
CESARE PAVESE

Absence Life Smoking
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
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
There is something indecent in words .
CESARE PAVESE

Decent Word
In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.
CESARE PAVESE

Insecurity Man Ready Sacrifice Sick Yourself
Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.
CESARE PAVESE

Luxury Pay World
The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.
CESARE PAVESE

Activity Fruit Personality Search
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
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
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
Love is desire for knowledge.
CESARE PAVESE

Desire Knowledge Love One Liner
All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.
CESARE PAVESE

Ambition Origin Sense Sin
The only joy in the world is to begin.
CESARE PAVESE

Beginning Job One Liner World
Not believing in anything is also a religion .
CESARE PAVESE

Believe Religion Wisdom
One must look for one thing only, to find many.
CESARE PAVESE

Finding Oneself Search
To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
CESARE PAVESE

Comfortable Cry Injustice Wrong Yourself
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
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
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
CESARE PAVESE

Artist Monk State

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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