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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.

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
People
Morning
Houses
Happy
Flames
House
Killed
Night
Wake
Might
Calm
Whole
City
Enough
Cities
Footpaths
Would
Knew
Unchanged

More quotes by Cesare Pavese

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No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.
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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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Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.
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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 richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
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Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.
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There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.
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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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When a woman marries she belongs to another man and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her.
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But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
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You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means that you are not alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the earth, there is something that belongs to you, waiting for you when you are not there.
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Love is the cheapest of religions.
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We obtain things when we no longer want them.
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Narrating incredible things as though they were real old system narrating realities as though they were incredible the new.
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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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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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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.
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If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.
Cesare Pavese
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The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.
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Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.
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