Quote

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.

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
Calm
Renunciation
Private
Remarks
Lasts
Deed
Last
Closing
Must
Weary
Revenge
Deeds
Rhythmic
Accounts
Remark

More quotes by Cesare Pavese

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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.
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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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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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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
Cesare Pavese
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One must look for one thing only, to find many.
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The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else's.
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To know the world, one must construct it
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A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.
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Love is desire for knowledge.
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The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.
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All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.
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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.
Cesare Pavese
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The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
Cesare Pavese
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Don't you know that what happens to you once always happens again? You always react in the same way to the same thing. It's no accident when you make a mess. Then you do it again. It's called destiny.
Cesare Pavese
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There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
Cesare Pavese
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We obtain things when we no longer want them.
Cesare Pavese
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A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself.
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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Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
Cesare Pavese
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Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.
Cesare Pavese