Cesare Pavese: Quotes about life

Cesare Pavese was Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Cesare Pavese: 274   quotes 20   likes

“We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)
Variant: The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
Source: The Burning Brand: Diaries, 1935-1950

Life , Memory

“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

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Men

“The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Communication , Problem , Loneliness

“But she didn't laugh. "When you have children," she said, staring at her glass, "you accept life. Do you accept life?"”

Cesare Pavese

Source: Among women only (1949), Chapter 9, p. 212

Life , Children

“We were at the age when a friend's conversation seems like oneself talking, when one shares a life in common the way I still think, bachelor though I am, some married couples are able to live.”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The Beach (1941), Chapter 2, p. 8

Life , Age , Way , Thinking

“Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our own destiny and we find peace.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Peace , Search

“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?”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Love , Life , Pain

“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

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life

“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.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life

“How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Confidence , Night

“For a long time we had talked of the hill as we might have talked of the sea or the woods. I used to go back there in the evening from the city when it grew dusk, and for me it was not just another place but a point of view, a way of life. For instance, I saw no difference between those hills and these ancient ones where I played as a child and where I live now: the same broken, straggling country, cultivated and wild, the same roads, farmhouses, and ravines. I used to climb up there in the evening as if I too were fleeing the nightly shock of the air-raid alarms.”

Cesare Pavese

Incipit
The house on the hill (1949)

Life , Way , Time , Sea

“Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life

“This much is certain: you can have anything in life except a wife to call you "her man." And till now all your life was based on that hope.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Hope

“The thing most feared in secret always happens.
I write: oh Thou, have mercy. And then?
All it takes is a little courage.
The more the pain grows clear and definite, the more the instinct for life asserts itself and the thought of suicide recedes.
It seemed easy when I thought of it. Weak women have done it. It takes humility, not pride.
All this is sickening.
Not words. An act. I won't write any more.”

Cesare Pavese

, end. Nine days later he committed suicide, leaving this message: «I forgive everyone and to everyone I ask forgiveness. Well enough? Don't gossip too much».
This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Women , Pain , Secret

“If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more?
No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight—they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Love , Life , People , Making love

“If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be!”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Feeling