240 Quotes by Cesare Pavese

A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.

It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone...

Work alone isn't enough for me and mine; we know how to break our backs, but the great dream Of my fathers was to be good at doing nothing.

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.

Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will. All the rest - thought, action - is just a pastime, mental or physical. What counts then, is to come to grips with reality. The rest can go.

Lessons are not given, they are taken.

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.

There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: ''You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.''