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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.

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
Sense
Enough
Captain
Hard
Captains
Ship
Abandon
Ships
Destiny
Times

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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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To know the world, one must construct it
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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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We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
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What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.
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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.
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You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
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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.
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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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Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.
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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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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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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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Woman gives herself as a prize to the weak and as a prop to the strong and no man ever has what he should.
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Love is desire for knowledge.
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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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The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.
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Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven.
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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.
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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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