Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavesewas an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator. He is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 September 1908
CountryItaly
vision looks one-thing
One must look for one thing only, to find many.
ambition inferiority sin
All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.
life art lying
The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.
art pain suffering
There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.
time years long
Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
love doe misery
One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.
love pain men
Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?
war one-day doe
Now that I've seen what war is ... I know that everybody, if one day it should end, ought to ask himself: "And what shall we make of the fallen? Why are they dead?" I wouldn't know what to say. Not now, at any rate. Nor does it seem to me that the others know. Perhaps only dead know, and only for them is the war really over.
morning night flames
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.
life luxury pay-the-price
Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.
world constructs knows
To know the world, one must construct it
avoiding
We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
love life friendship
Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.
ivy innuendo
Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there?