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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.

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
Test
Tests
Longer
Pleasure
Desire
Futility
Enjoyment
Actual
Obsessed

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Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
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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.
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The only joy in the world is to begin.
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I was happy enough I knew that during the night the whole city might go up in flames and all its people be killed, but the ravines, houses, and footpaths would wake in the morning calm and unchanged.
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We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.
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When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.
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From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette
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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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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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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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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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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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Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi. (Death will come and it will have your eyes.)
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When writing poetry, it is not that produces a bright idea, but the bright idea that kindles the fire of.
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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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The real affliction of old age is remorse.
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Love is desire for knowledge.
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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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If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.
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