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

Cesare Pavese

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

Costume Old Party Word Yourself
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 face of the night will be an old wound that reopens each evening, impassive and living. The distant silence will ache like a soul, mute, in the dark. We’ll speak to the night as it’s whispering softly.
CESARE PAVESE

Darkness Evening Face Night Old Soft Talk Whisper Wound
Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other’s sight, but in their own.
CESARE PAVESE

Love Lover Naked Sight
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 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
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.
CESARE PAVESE

Born Complete Mad Perfection
Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.
CESARE PAVESE

Death Disturb Repose
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 cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
CESARE PAVESE

Beginning Heart Night Suffering
I am the captain of my destiny, I do not abandon the ship in hard times, But, I do have sense enough not to go down with the ship.
CESARE PAVESE

Abandonment Captain Destiny Enough Hard Time Myself
A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.
CESARE PAVESE

Complete Man Success Transcendence Work
The real affliction of old age is remorse.
CESARE PAVESE

Affliction Age Old Reality
But all years are stupid. It’s only when they’re over that they become interesting.
CESARE PAVESE

Interest Lost Stupidity Time Wisdom
You’ve got to understand life, understand it when you’re young.
CESARE PAVESE

Life Understand Young Yourself
Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.
CESARE PAVESE

Human Imagination Poor Reality

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

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

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