Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Desire
Futility
Enjoyment
Actual
Obsessed
Test
Tests
Longer
Pleasure

More quotes by Cesare Pavese

Image
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.
Cesare Pavese
Image
The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
Cesare Pavese
Image
But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
Cesare Pavese
Image
All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.
Cesare Pavese
Image
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
Image
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.
Cesare Pavese
Image
Narrating incredible things as though they were real old system narrating realities as though they were incredible the new.
Cesare Pavese
Image
It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her.
Cesare Pavese
Image
When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.
Cesare Pavese
Image
No woman marries for money they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.
Cesare Pavese
Image
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.
Cesare Pavese
Image
To avenge a wrong done to you, is to rob yourself of the comfort of crying out against the injustice of it.
Cesare Pavese
Image
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
Cesare Pavese
Image
From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette
Cesare Pavese
Image
There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
Cesare Pavese
Image
Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.
Cesare Pavese
Image
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.
Cesare Pavese
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We obtain things when we no longer want them.
Cesare Pavese