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The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.

Primo Levi

Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.
PRIMO LEVI

Accompany Anyone Experience Exposure Gossip Nature Obey relief Satisfy Transmitting
Is anything sadder than a trainThat leaves when it’s supposed to,That has only one voice,Only one route?There’s nothing sadder.Except perhaps a cart horse,Shut between two shaftsAnd unable even to look sideways.
PRIMO LEVI

Anything One Only Route Sadder Suppose Trainmleave Voice
Dawn came on us like a betrayer; it seemed as though the new sun rose as an ally of our enemies to assist in our destruction.
PRIMO LEVI

All Assist Betrayer Came Dawn Destruction Enemy Like New Rose Seem Sun
He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good
PRIMO LEVI

Good Hardly Heart Language Read Spoken
The principle of order in me, around me, and in the world… I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.
PRIMO LEVI

Around Bud Everything Granite Principle Spring Swell Understand Watch World
Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust.
PRIMO LEVI

Centaur Divine Dust Flesh Inspirational Man Mind
For people of science, he is a hero. Denying man a privileged place in creation, .. he reaffirms with his own intellectual courage the dignity of man.
PRIMO LEVI

Creation Deny Dignity Hero Intellectual Man People Place Proiledge Science Source
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
More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.
PRIMO LEVI

Act Ask Believe Dangerous More Question Ready
Everybody is somebody’s Jew.
PRIMO LEVI

Everybody Jew Somebody
We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.
PRIMO LEVI

Bottom Luck never Prevarication Return Seen Skill Touch Wordless
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
The aims of life are the best defense against death.
PRIMO LEVI

Against Aim Best Death Defense Life
I have many times been praised for my lack of animosity towards the Germans. It’s not a philosophical virtue. It’s a habit of having my second reactions before the first.
PRIMO LEVI

Animosity Country Lack Many Praise Time Towards
I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer.
PRIMO LEVI

Beg Cloth Detect Distress Force Greatly Message Reader Search Term
After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light.
PRIMO LEVI

After Become Before Bettie God Love Many Million Particular Pass Planet Year

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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