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Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will.

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
Prison
Reality
Always

More quotes by Cesare Pavese

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War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values.
Cesare Pavese
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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?
Cesare Pavese
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Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.
Cesare Pavese
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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
Cesare Pavese
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Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.
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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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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Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi. (Death will come and it will have your eyes.)
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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The real affliction of old age is remorse.
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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Love is desire for knowledge.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God.
Cesare Pavese
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Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.
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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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.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese