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

Cesare Pavese

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

Day Moments Remember Yourself
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
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
We want Realism’s wealth of experience and Symbolism’s depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.
CESARE PAVESE

Balance Deep Feeling Opposite Problem Reality Wealth
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
For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.
CESARE PAVESE

Contemporary Existence History Woman
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
CESARE PAVESE

Artist Monk State
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
Love is the cheapest of religions.
CESARE PAVESE

Cheap Love One Liner Religion
There is something indecent in words .
CESARE PAVESE

Decent Word
Hate is always a clash between our spirit and someone else’s body.
CESARE PAVESE

Body Hate Spirit
You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday’s parties.
CESARE PAVESE

Costume Old Party Word Yourself
All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.
CESARE PAVESE

Ambition Origin Sense Sin
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
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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