Quote

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.

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
Action
Reality
Grips
Past
Pastime
Thought
Counts
Come
Mental
Always
Prison
Physical
Rest

More quotes by Cesare Pavese

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To know the world, one must construct it
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We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
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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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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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Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
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Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
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Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi. (Death will come and it will have your eyes.)
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If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be.
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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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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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A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.
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When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.
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.
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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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Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.
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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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