No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the exa… - Cesare Pavese

The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.

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.

All of them, all those idiots who force their brains and don't know when to stop.