Cesare Pavese Quotes

We obtain things when we no longer want them.

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.

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

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

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.

Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.

No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.

When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. 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.

Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live.

La difficoltà di commettere suicidio sta in questo: è un atto di ambizione che si può commettere solo quando si sia superata ogni ambizione.

The real affliction of old age is remorse.

The most banal thing, discovered in ourselves, becomes intensely interesting. It is no longer an abstract banality, but an amazing co-ordination between reality and our own individuality.

Life without smoking is like the smoke without the roast.

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

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.