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The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.

Primo Levi

We collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed in every century.
PRIMO LEVI

Collect Door Experiment Front Grief Group Newmancient Ourselves
To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn’t.
PRIMO LEVI

Call Consider Coward Defender Ennoblement Exatiation Lascivious Lazy Mendacious More Painful Stupidity Told Vice Violent Weakness
Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.
PRIMO LEVI

Belong Event Live Naratte Perfection
Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.
PRIMO LEVI

Almost Happened Holocaust Justify More Must One Perhaps Understand
I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.
PRIMO LEVI

Day Enter Larger Liberate Live Nonbelievever
We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.
PRIMO LEVI

Assume Badly Beautiful Brisky Decide Fly Message Mystery Perturbing Sign Straight Stung Think Value
Our ignorance allowed us to live, as you are in the mountains, and your rope is frayed and about to break, but you don’t know it and feel safe.
PRIMO LEVI

Allows Break Frayed Ignorance Know Mountain Our Rope Usm Live
I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine.
PRIMO LEVI

Beautiful House Inside Live More Picturesque Simple Skin Sturdy
Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.
PRIMO LEVI

Age Country Mother People Person Province Reason Speak Think Today
He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good
PRIMO LEVI

Good Hardly Heart Language Read Spoken
Each of us bears the imprint of a friend met along the way; In each the trace of each.
PRIMO LEVI

Along Bear Each Friend Imprint Met Trace Way
The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it.
PRIMO LEVI

Attractiveness Butterfly Color Contribute Deeper Derive Motive Only Symmetry
Nothing can be said: nothing sure, nothing probable, nothing honest. Better to err through omission than through commission: better to refrain from steering the fate of others, since it is already so difficult to navigate one’s own.
PRIMO LEVI

Honest Nothing Probably Said Sue
Conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were learning to unravel, was poetry.
PRIMO LEVI

Conquer Matter Necessary Ourselves Poetry Understand Universe
The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.
PRIMO LEVI

Both Deprive Everything Extreme Infinite Nature Obstacle Prevent Realization Sam State
I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself
PRIMO LEVI

Enough Kill Known Live Myself

The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.

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The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.

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