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Cesare Pavese
133 quotes
“We obtain things when we no longer want them.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it—only then—for the first time.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is desire for knowledge.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Narrating incredible things as though they were real—old system; narrating realities as though they were incredible—the new.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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).”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, too look back to when we were children.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is only one pleasure—that of being alive. All the rest is misery.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The act—the act—must not be a revenge. It must be a calm, weary renunciation, a closing of accounts, a private, rhythmic deed. The last remark.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing can be added to the rest, to the past. We always begin afresh. One nail drives out another. But four nails make a cross.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The thing most feared in secret always happens. I write: oh Thou, have mercy. And then? All it takes is a little courage. The more the pain grows clear and definite, the more the instinct for life asserts itself and the thought of suicide recedes. It seemed easy when I thought of it. Weak women have done it. It takes humility, not pride. All this is sickening. Not words. An act. I won't write any more.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For some time my friend Doro and I had agreed that I would be his guest. I was very fond of Doro, and when he married and went to Genoa to live, I was half sick over it. When I wrote to refuse his invitation to the wedding, I got a dry and rather haughty note replying that if his money wasn't good for establishing himself in a city that pleased his wife, he didn't know what it was good for. Then, one fine day as I was passing through Genoa I stopped at his house and we made peace. I liked his wife very much, a tomboy type who graciously asked me to call her Clelia and left us alone as much as she should, and when she showed up again in the evening to go out with us, she had become a charming woman whose hand I would have kissed had I been anyone else but myself.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even today I wonder why those Germans didn't wait for me at the villa and send someone to look for me in Turin. It is because of their failure that I am still free and up here. Why I should have been saved and not Gallo, or Tono, or Cate, I don't know. Perhaps because I'm supposed to suffer for others? Because I'm the most useless and don't deserve anything, not even punishment? Because I went into a church that time? The experience of danger creates more cowards every day. It makes one stupid. I have reached the point of being alive only by chance, when many better men than I are dead, I don't like it, it's not enough. At time, after having listened to the useless radio and looked through the windows at the empty vineyards, I think that living by accident is not living, and I wonder if have really escaped.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But I have seen the unknown dead, those little men of the Republic. It was they who woke me up. If a stranger, an enemy, becomes a thing like that when he dies, if one stops short and is afraid to walk over him, it means that even beaten our enemy is someone, that after having shed his blood, one must placate it, give this blood a voice, justify the man who shed it. Looking at certain dead is humiliating. One has the impression that the same fate that threw these bodies to the ground holds us nailed to the spot to see them, to fill our eyes with the sight. It's not fear, not our usual cowardice. One feels humiliated because one understands–touching it with one's eyes–that we might be in their place ourselves: there would be no difference, and if we live we owe it to this dirtied corpse. That is why every war is a civil war; every fallen man resembles one who remains and calls him to account.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every woman longs for a man friend to confide in, to fill the empty hours when the one she loves is away; she insists that this friend does not affect her love for the absent one; she takes offense if he makes any demand that might interfere with her love; but if that friend grows cautious and keeps his words and glances under control, with the sole object of saving himself further suffering, then the woman — any woman — immediately does her best to increase her hold upon him so that she can watch him suffer. And she does not even realize she is doing it. Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared. It is amazing that the woman you love may tell you her days are empty and unbearable, but yet she has no wish to know what yours are like.* // 17th November 1937.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source