The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.
PRIMO LEVIThe sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good
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If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?
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Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that’s why you’re not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable.
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The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium.
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It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.
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Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it.
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If a writer is convinced that he is honest, then it is very difficult for him to be a bad writer.
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A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.
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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.
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There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect.
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If it is true that there is no greater sorrow than to remember a happy time in a state of misery, it is just as true that calling up a moment of anguish in a tranquil mood, seated quietly at one’s desk, is a source of profound satisfaction.
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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.
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One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one’s mind: this is a temptation one must resist.
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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.
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It is this refrain that we hear repeated by everyone: you are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney. (What did it mean? Soon we were all to learn what it meant.)
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