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

More quotes by Cesare Pavese

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The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.
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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
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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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To know the world, one must construct it
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A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself.
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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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A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.
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Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
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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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You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
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Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.
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Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
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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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You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.
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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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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
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
Cesare Pavese
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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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We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
Cesare Pavese