Quotes by
Cesare Pavese |
1908-1950 , Italian writer
Poet, novelist, literary critic and translator. He is considered among the major Italian authors of the 20th century.Best known books: La Spiaggia (The Beach, 1941), Feria d’ agosto (August Holiday, 1946), Il Compagno (The Comrade, 1947), Il diavolo sulle colline (The Devil in the Hills, 1948), Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi (Death Will Come and Have your Eyes–poems–1951).
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Quotations
| • | We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites. 2 |
| • | We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it. |
| • | If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears. |
| • | Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. |
| • | The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten. |
| • | We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong. |
| • | The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it. |
| • | One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one’s trouble does not make it any better. |
| • | The real affliction of old age is remorse. |
| • | Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman. |
| • | Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality. |
| • | Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible. |
| • | Hate is always a clash between our spirit and someone else's body. |
| • | But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever. |
| • | Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue. |
| • | Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long. |
| • | All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition. |
| • | 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. |
| • | One must look for one thing only, to find many. |
| • | Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it. |
| • | We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts. |
| • | Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own. |
| • | We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God. |
| • | Artists are the monks of the bourgeois society. |
| • | 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 only one pleasure —that of being alive. All the rest is misery. |
| • | There is something indecent in words . |
| • | Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd. |
| • | Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism. |
| • | 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. |
| • | 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 only joy in the world is to begin. |
| • | There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life. |
| • | Don’t mix wine and women. |
| • | Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world. |
| • | Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. |
| • | We never remember days, only moments. |
| • | The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. |
