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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.

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
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Acceptance
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Personality
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More quotes by Cesare Pavese

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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.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
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You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
Cesare Pavese
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The only joy in the world is to begin.
Cesare Pavese
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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
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People who don't know any better will always be in the dark because the power lies in the hands of men who take good care that ordinary folk don't understand, in the hands, that is, of the government, of the clerical party, of the capitalists.
Cesare Pavese
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The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.
Cesare Pavese
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The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
Cesare Pavese
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We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.
Cesare Pavese
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What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.
Cesare Pavese
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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
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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
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
Cesare Pavese
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One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese