Cesare Pavese > Quotes

“Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.”
― Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
― Cesare Pavese

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.
You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
― Cesare Pavese

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

“Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.”
― Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

“No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.”
― Cesare Pavese

“The great lovers will always be unhappy, because for them love is great and so they ask of their beloved the same intensity of thought that they have for her – otherwise they feel betrayed.”
― Cesare Pavese

“From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette”
― Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living: Diaries, 1935-1950

“The only joy in the world is to begin.”
― Cesare Pavese

“The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves.”
― Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

“The whole problem of life is this: how to break out of one's own solitude, how to communicate with others.”
― Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

“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.”
― Cesare Pavese

“Dawn's faint breath
breathes with your mouth
at the ends of empty streets.
Gray light your eyes,
sweet drops of dawn
on dark hills.
Your steps and breath
like the wind of dawn
smother houses.
The city shudders,
Stones exhale—
you are life, an awakening.

Star lost
in the light of dawn,
trill of the breeze,
warmth, breath—
the night is done.

You are light and morning.”
― Cesare Pavese

“On ne se souvient pas des jours, on se souvient des instants.”
― Cesare Pavese

“You will be loved the day when you will be able to show your weakness without the other person using it to assert his strength.”
― Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

“There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.”
― Cesare Pavese

“The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.”
― Cesare Pavese

“Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.”
― Cesare Pavese

“Vei fi iubit în ziua în care vei putea să-ţi arăţi slăbiciunile fără ca celălalt să se folosească de asta pentru a-şi spori puterea.”
― Cesare Pavese

“Leggendo non cerchiamo idee nuove, ma pensieri già da noi pensati, che acquistano sulla pagina un suggello di conferma. Ci colpiscono degli altri le parole che risuonano in una zona già nostra – che già viviamo – e facendola vibrare ci permettono di cogliere nuovi spunti dentro di noi.”
― Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

“Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi. (Death will come and it will have your eyes.)”
― Cesare Pavese

“But here's the worst part: the trick to life lies in hiding from those we hold most dear how much they mean to is; if not, we'd lose them.”
― Cesare Pavese

“Leggendo non cerchiamo idee nuove, ma pensieri già da noi pensati, che acquistano sulla pagina un suggello di conferma.”
― Cesare Pavese

“Non si ricordano i giorni, si ricordano gli attimi.”
― Cesare Pavese

“We do not remember days, we remember moments”
― Cesare Pavese

“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, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

“Even something harsh and difficult is a comfort if we choose it ourselves. If it is imposed on us by others, it is agony.”
― Cesare Pavese

“all is the same
time has gone by
some day you come
some day you'll die
someone has died
long time ago.”
― Cesare Pavese

“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

“Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.”
― Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950