Quote

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.

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
Happen
Point
Happens
Anything
Live
Whole
Concentrate
Life
Discover
Except

More quotes by Cesare Pavese

Image
But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.
Cesare Pavese
Image
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
Image
Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.
Cesare Pavese
Image
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.
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
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.
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
Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will.
Cesare Pavese
Image
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
Image
Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
Cesare Pavese
Image
Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.
Cesare Pavese
Image
How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?
Cesare Pavese
Image
One must look for one thing only, to find many.
Cesare Pavese
Image
The real affliction of old age is remorse.
Cesare Pavese
Image
Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.
Cesare Pavese
Image
The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.
Cesare Pavese
Image
All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.
Cesare Pavese
Image
You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
Cesare Pavese
Image
At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it, breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life by dying, you would escape this longing for death.
Cesare Pavese
Image
Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live.
Cesare Pavese