55 Quotes by Natalia Ginzburg

The true defense against wealth is not a fear of wealth – of its fragility and of the vicious consequences that it can bring – the true defense against wealth is an indifference to money.

And they laughed a little and were very friendly together, the three of them, Anna, Emanuele and Giustino; and they were pleased to be together, the three of them, thinking of all those who were dead, and of the long war and the sorrow and noise and confusion, and of the long, difficult life which they saw in front of them now, full of all the things they did not know how to do.

Someone who has seen a house collapse knows only too clearly what frail things little vases of flowers and pictures and white walls are. He knows only too well what a house is made of.

Human relationships have to be rediscovered every day. We have to remember constantly that every kind of meeting with our neighbor is a human action and so it is always evil or good, true or deceitful, a kindness or a sin.

He knew how to find time to study and to write, to earn his living and to wander idly through the streets he loved; whereas we, who staggered from laziness to frantic activity and back again, wasted our time trying to decide whether we were lazy or industrious.

You aren’t ill: it is just that you are made of second-rate materials.

At times he was very unhappy, but for a long time we thought that he would be cured of this unhappiness when he decided to become an adult; his unhappiness seemed like that of a boy – the absent-minded, voluptuous melancholy of a boy who has not yet got his feet on the ground and who lives in the sterile, solitary world of his dreams.

Two little provincial intellectuals, that was what they were, and that is the dreariest and oddest thing that can exist on earth.

But after a certain point in life a person has to dunk her regrets in the morning coffee, just like biscuits.