Cesare Pavese quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Cesare Pavese

Cesare Pavese Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Cesare Pavese on Wise Famous Quotes.

Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man

But here's the worst part: the trick to life lies in hiding from those we hold most dear how much they mean to is; if not, we'd lose them.

A 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.

The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.

Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.

Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.

Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.

Work alone isn't enough for me and mine; we know how to break our backs, but the great dream Of my fathers was to be good at doing nothing.

It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone ...

Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.

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.

The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.

Narrating incredible things as though they were real old system; narrating realities as though they were incredible the new.

Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.

Don't mix wine and women.

In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.

We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.

Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.

Love is the cheapest of religions.

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.

What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.

If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be.

A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.

One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one's trouble does not make it any better.

Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time.

Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.

We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.

Love is desire for knowledge.

The real affliction of old age is remorse.

Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.

You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .

Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it.

You wait for nothing if not for the word that will burst from the deep like a fruit among branches.

We obtain things when we no longer want them.

Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always.

We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God .

When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.

What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.

We like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest.

From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette

All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.

How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?

Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.

All our "most sacred affections " are merely prosaic habit.

One must look for one thing only, to find many.

The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment.

When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her.

There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, too look back to when we were children .

Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own.

Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there?

We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.

The man who cannot live with charity, sharing other men's pain, is punished by feeling his own with intolerable anguish.

But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

Are you or aren't you convinced that weakness is a man's condition? How can you raise yourself if you haven't fallen first?

A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself.

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.

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.

You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.

There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

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.

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.

The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.

I thought of how many places there are in the world that belong in this way to someone, who has it in his blood beyond anyone else's understanding.

Not believing in anything is also a religion .

Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.

There is something indecent in words .

We never remember days, only moments.

Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.

A corpse is what's left after waking too often.

Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.

We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.

To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.

A work settles nothing, just as the labor of a whole generation settles nothing. Sons, and the morrow, always start afresh.

All is the same
time has gone by
some day you come
some day you'll die
someone has died
long time ago.

We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.

But all years are stupid. It's only when they're over that they become interesting.

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

Even something harsh and difficult is a comfort if we choose it ourselves. If it is imposed on us by others, it is agony.

If all this were true, how easy it would be to understand people.

When writing poetry, it is not that produces a bright idea, but the bright idea that kindles the fire of.

Woman gives herself as a prize to the weak and as a prop to the strong and no man ever has what he should.

The whole problem of life is this: how to break out of one's own solitude, how to communicate with others.

The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.

When a man mourns for someone who has played him false, it is not for love of her, but for his own humiliation at not having deserved her trust.

Hate is always a clash between our spirit and someone else's body.

Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.

What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.

No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.

The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.

It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.

No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.

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

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.

There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.

Lessons are not given, they are taken.

Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.