Cesare Pavese Quotes
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When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.
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It is not that things happen to each of us according to his fate, but that he interprets what has happened, if he has power to do so, according to his sense of his own destiny.
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Don't mix wine and women.
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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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The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.
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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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Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
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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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A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.
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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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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
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I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.
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Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.
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Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
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Hate is always a clash between our spirit and someone else's body.
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There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.
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Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.
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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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To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering. Those who, by their very nature, can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification for suicide.
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It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone...
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You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday's parties.
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Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time.
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Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.
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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.