“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.”
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
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Cesare Pavese 137
Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator 1908–1950Related quotes
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”
Letter to his Italian friend, Philip Mazzei (1796)
1790s
“Faith gives you an inner strength and a sense of balance and perspective in life.”
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Source: The World As I See It
Context: How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving....
“He goes seeking liberty, which is so dear, as he knows who gives his life for it.”
Canto I, lines 71–72 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio
Source: Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1982), p. 95 (1994 edition)
General, The Idiot (1868–9)