Quote

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

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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
Left
Sustains
Writing
Unsaid
Every
Disturbance
Something
Certainty
Page
Mental
Pages
Effort

More quotes by 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.
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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?
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Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
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Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
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We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
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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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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.
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What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.
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Love is desire for knowledge.
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We do not remember days, we remember moments.
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When a man mourns for someone who has played him false, it is not for love of her, but for his own humiliation at not having deserved her trust.
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Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will. All the rest - thought, action - is just a pastime, mental or physical. What counts then, is to come to grips with reality. The rest can go.
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Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.
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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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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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We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.
Cesare Pavese
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.
Cesare Pavese
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Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.
Cesare Pavese
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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