Quote

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

Cesare Pavese

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Cesare Pavese
Age: 41 †
Born: 1908
Born: September 9
Died: 1950
Died: August 27
Biographer
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Editor
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Long
Swiftly
Years
Idleness
Time
Slowly
Pass
Activity
Short
Hours
Makes

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At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it, breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life by dying, you would escape this longing for death.
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There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
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Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.
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Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.
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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.
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There is something indecent in words .
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Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.
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Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.
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How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?
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We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.
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The only joy in the world is to begin.
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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.
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You wait for nothing if not for the word that will burst from the deep like a fruit among branches.
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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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The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.
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Woman gives herself as a prize to the weak and as a prop to the strong and no man ever has what he should.
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You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.
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Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
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From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette
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Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.
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