Cesare Pavese citations

Page 5

“Attendre est encore une occupation. C'est ne rien attendre qui est terrible.”

“L’art est la preuve que la vie ne suffit pas.”

“Tu seras aimé le jour où tu pourras montrer tes faiblesses sans que l'autre s'en serve pour affirmer sa force.”

“Il y a une chose plus triste que d'avoir raté ses idéaux, c'est de les avoir réalisés.”

“Il arrive qu'une femme rencontre une épave et qu'elle décide d'en faire un homme sain. Elle y réussit parfois. Il arrive qu'une femme rencontre un homme sain et décide d'en faire une épave. Elle y réussit toujours.”

“Narrating incredible things as though they were real—old system; narrating realities as though they were incredible—the new.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it.”

“Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.”

“The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away.”

“He told me that it isn't what you do but how you do it that shows whether you are clever or not.”

“Love is the cheapest of religions.”

“We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.”

“Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.”

“She didn't seem dead. There was only a swelling of the lips, as if she were angry. The strange thing was her idea of renting a painter's studio, having an armchiar, no less, drawn up s she could die in front of the window that looked toward Superga. A cat had given her away–it was in the room with her, and the next day, miaowing and scratching the door, it had made them open.”

“What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.”

“Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always.”

“It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone…”