Cesare Pavese Quotes
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The only joy in the world is to begin.
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The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.
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A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.
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A corpse is what's left after waking too often.
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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.
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Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will. All the rest - thought, action - is just a pastime, mental or physical. What counts then, is to come to grips with reality. The rest can go.
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In fact a man in love or one consumed with hatred creates symbols for himself, as a superstitious man does, from a passion of conferring uniqueness on things or persons. A man who knows nothing of symbols is one of Dante's sluggards. This is why art mirrors itself in primitive rites or strong passions, seeking for symbols, revolving round the primitive taste for savagery, for what is irrational (blood and sex).
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The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.
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Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.
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Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.
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There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, too look back to when we were children.
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Dawn's faint breath breathes with your mouth at the ends of empty streets. Gray light your eyes, sweet drops of dawn on dark hills. Your steps and breath like the wind of dawn smother houses. The city shudders, Stones exhale - you are life, an awakening. Star lost in the light of dawn, trill of the breeze, warmth, breath - the night is done. You are light and morning.
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The richness of life lies in the memories we have forgotten.
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Narrating incredible things as though they were real old system; narrating realities as though they were incredible the new.
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There is only one pleasure - that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
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We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
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The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.
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You dont remember days, you remember moments
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Love is the cheapest of religions.
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To know the world, one must construct it
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What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.
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One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one's trouble does not make it any better.
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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.
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What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.