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Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.

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
Upon
Formed
Next
Maturity
Also
Impression
Seems
Reflection
Every
Period
Multiplied
Long
Periods
Reflections
Really
Childhood
Impressions
Life
Probably
Adolescence

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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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There is something indecent in words .
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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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To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
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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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You wait for nothing if not for the word that will burst from the deep like a fruit among branches.
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The problem is not the harshness of Fate, for anything we want strongly enough we get. The trouble is rather that when we have it we grow sick of it, and then we should never blame Fate, only our own desire.
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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.
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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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Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.
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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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Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
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The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
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You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means that you are not alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the earth, there is something that belongs to you, waiting for you when you are not there.
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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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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.
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We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God.
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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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Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
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