240 Quotes by Cesare Pavese

When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her.

The man who cannot live with charity, sharing other men's pain, is punished by feeling his own with intolerable anguish.

There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, too look back to when we were children .

Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.

The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess.

Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing behaviour of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes.

The act the act must not be a revenge. It must be a calm, weary renunciation, a closing of accounts, a private, rhythmic deed. The last remark.

Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man.

A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.