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Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

Cesare Pavese

We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.
CESARE PAVESE

Goodness Thinking Work
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
CESARE PAVESE

Artist Monk State
Don’t mix wine and women.
CESARE PAVESE

One Liner Wine Woman
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
From someone who doesn’t want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette.
CESARE PAVESE

Acceptance Destiny Share Yourself
Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.
CESARE PAVESE

Greatness Happiness Important Intensity Love Lover
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
CESARE PAVESE

Drop End Life Party
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
Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
CESARE PAVESE

Occupation Patient Terrible
The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.
CESARE PAVESE

Art Believe Live Lying
But here’s the worst part: the trick to life lies in hiding from those we hold most dear how much they mean to is; if not, we’d lose them.
CESARE PAVESE

Hide Life Lose People Trick Worst
It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.
CESARE PAVESE

Friendship Grief Herself Loss Stupidity Yourself
One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one’s trouble does not make it any better.
CESARE PAVESE

Better Children Oneself Stop Trouble
The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
CESARE PAVESE

Forget Life Memories Rich
Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.
CESARE PAVESE

Hands Mouth Ready Willing
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
Love is desire for knowledge.
CESARE PAVESE

Desire Knowledge Love One Liner
All our “most sacred affections ” are merely prosaic habit.
CESARE PAVESE

Affection Habit Scared
A corpse is what’s left after waking too often.
CESARE PAVESE

Body Death Wake
But all years are stupid. It’s only when they’re over that they become interesting.
CESARE PAVESE

Interest Lost Stupidity Time Wisdom
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
We never remember days, only moments.
CESARE PAVESE

Day Moments Remember
There is something indecent in words .
CESARE PAVESE

Decent Word
You don’t remember days, you remember moments.
CESARE PAVESE

Day Moments Remember Yourself
But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
CESARE PAVESE

Purpose Reality Service Suffering Truth
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
One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.
CESARE PAVESE

Kill Love Naked Nothing Vulnerable Woman

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

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Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

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