Cesare Pavese Quotes
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What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.
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The problem is not the harshness of Fate, for anything we want strongly enough we get. The trouble is rather that when we have it we grow sick of it, and then we should never blame Fate, only our own desire.
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There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.
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Don't mix wine and women.
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Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always.
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When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own - the place where we live - and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves
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You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.
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Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it.
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The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.
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Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life. Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone.
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Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
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We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.
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It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone...
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The real affliction of old age is remorse.
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I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.
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Hate is always a clash between our spirit and someone else's body.
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A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.
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Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.
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Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.
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Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.
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Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
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Now that I've seen what war is ... I know that everybody, if one day it should end, ought to ask himself: "And what shall we make of the fallen? Why are they dead?" I wouldn't know what to say. Not now, at any rate. Nor does it seem to me that the others know. Perhaps only dead know, and only for them is the war really over.
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Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.
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It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.