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
Activity
Short
Hours
Makes
Long
Swiftly
Years
Idleness
Time
Slowly
Pass

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Narrating incredible things as though they were real old system narrating realities as though they were incredible the new.
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You don't remember days, you remember moments.
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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.
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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.
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All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.
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Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will.
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The search for a new personality is futile what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.
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There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
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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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Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing behaviour of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes.
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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.
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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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I am the captain of my destiny, I do not abandon the ship in hard times, But, I do have sense enough not to go down with the ship.
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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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Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends
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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.
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You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
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It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it.
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You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.
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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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