Cesare Pavese Quotes
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The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
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Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing behaviour of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes.
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If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be.
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A work settles nothing, just as the labor of a whole generation settles nothing. Sons, and the morrow, always start afresh.
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Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.
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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.
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Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
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The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.
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No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.
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Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live.
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War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values.
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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.
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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.
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If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.
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I was happy enough; I knew that during the night the whole city might go up in flames and all its people be killed, but the ravines, houses, and footpaths would wake in the morning calm and unchanged.
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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.
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Woman gives herself as a prize to the weak and as a prop to the strong and no man ever has what he should.
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Nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission.
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Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.
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There is something indecent in words
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One must look for one thing only, to find many.
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The only joy in the world is to begin.
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To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
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One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.