Cesare Pavese quotes - page 3

Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism. (Cesare Pavese)
Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there? View quote
Cesare Pavese
I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company. View quote
Cesare Pavese
There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first. View quote
Cesare Pavese
Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always. View quote
Cesare Pavese
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. View quote
Cesare Pavese
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. View quote
Cesare Pavese
It had to happen to you, to concentrate your whole life on one point, and then discover that you can do anything except live at that point. View quote
Cesare Pavese
To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it. View quote
Cesare Pavese
How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night? View quote
Cesare Pavese
A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work. (Cesare Pavese)
The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away. View quote
Cesare Pavese
In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid. View quote
Cesare Pavese
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. View quote
Cesare Pavese
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. View quote
Cesare Pavese
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. View quote
Cesare Pavese
Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven. View quote
Cesare Pavese
When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her. View quote
Cesare Pavese
You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young. View quote
Cesare Pavese
Don't mix wine and women, Doro. View quote
Cesare Pavese
The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others. (Cesare Pavese)
I thought of how many places there are in the world that belong in this way to someone, who has it in his blood beyond anyone else's understanding. View quote
Cesare Pavese
Consider this point carefully: 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. View quote
Cesare Pavese
Don't you know that what happens to you once always happens again? You always react in the same way to the same thing. It's no accident when you make a mess. Then you do it again. It's called destiny. View quote
Cesare Pavese
In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities. View quote
Cesare Pavese