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 PAVESEA man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man – the one he used to be.
More Cesare Pavese Quotes
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The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else’s.
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The man who cannot live with charity, sharing other men’s pain, is punished by feeling his own with intolerable anguish.
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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.
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For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.
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To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
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We never remember days, only moments.
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There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.
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The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one’s own loneliness, how to communicate with others.
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You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
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It had to happen to you, to concentrate your whole life on one point, and then discover that you can do anything except live at that point.
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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
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From someone who doesn’t want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette.
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The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.
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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.
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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.
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We like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest.
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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.
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All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.
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The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
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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.
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But all years are stupid. It’s only when they’re over that they become interesting.
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The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.
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There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
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Not believing in anything is also a religion .
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There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.
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If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more? No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves.
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