Background Image

...

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.

-Cesare Pavese

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

A Consoling Thought: What

Cesare Pavese

...

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.

Views: 49010

Topic

More From Cesare Pavese

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.

Life Is Pain And The Enjoyment Of Love Is An Anesthetic.

Generations Do Not Age. Every Youth Of Any Period, Any Civilization, Has The Same Possibilities As Always.

To Know The World, One Must Construct It

To Avenge A Wrong Done To You, Is To Rob Yourself Of The Comfort Of Crying Out Against The Injustice Of It.

Don't You Know That What Happens To You Once Always Happens Again? You Always React In The Same Way To The Same Thing. It's No Accident When You Make A Mess. Then You Do It Again. It's Called Destiny.

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.

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.

I've Discovered Nothing. But Do You Remember How Much We Talked When We Were Boys? We Talked Just For The Fun Of It. We Knew Very Well It Was Only Talk, But Still We Enjoyed It.

War Makes Men Barbarous Because, To Take Part In It, One Must Harden Oneself Against All Regret, All Appreciation Of Delicacy And Sensitive Values. One Must Live As If Those Values Did Not Exist, And When The War Is Over One Has Lost The Resilience To Return To Those Values.

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.

There Is No Finer Revenge Than That Which Others Inflict On Your Enemy. Moreover, It Has The Advantage Of Leaving You The Role Of A Generous Man.

Traveling Is A Brutality. It Forces You To Trust Strangers And To Lose Sight Of All That Familiar Comfort Of Home And Friends

Strangers And Friends

A Love Thought: I Love You So Much That I Could Wish I Had Been Born Your Brother, Or Had Brought You Into The World Myself.

Why Does A Man Who Is Truly In Love Insist That This Relationship Must Continue And Be "lifelong"? Because Life Is Pain And The Enjoyment Of Love Is An Anesthetic. Who Would Want To Wake Up Halfway Through An Operation?

Great Lovers Will Always Be Unhappy, Because, For Them, Love Is Of Supreme Importance. Consequently They Demand Of Their Beloved The Same Intensity Of Thought As They Have For Her, Otherwise They Feel Betrayed.

We Commit Two Wrongs When We Fail To Right A Wrong.

All Our "most Sacred Affections " Are Merely Prosaic Habit.

Life Without Smoking Is Like The Smoke Without The Roast.

Many Men On The Point Of An Edifying Death Would Be Furious If They Were Suddenly Restored To Health.

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

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.

The Cadence Of Suffering Has Begun. Every Evening At Dusk, My Heart Constricts Until Night Has Come.

Give Me The Ready Hand Rather Than The Ready Tongue.

Human Imagination Is Immensely Poorer Than Reality.

Love Is Desire For Knowledge.

Desire For Knowledge

To Choose A Hardship For Ourselves Is Our Only Defense Against That Hardship. This Is What Is Meant By Accepting Suffering. Those Who, By Their Very Nature, Can Suffer Completely, Utterly, Have An Advantage. That Is How We Can Disarm The Power Of Suffering, Make It Our Own Creation, Our Own Choice; Submit To It. A Justification For Suicide.

You Wait For Nothing If Not For The Word That Will Burst From The Deep Like A Fruit Among Branches.

There Is Mercy For Everyone, Except Those Who Are Bored With Life.

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 Example Of The World Around Him. And A Man, No Matter How Conservative, Shows His Own Worth By His Personal Deviation From That Pattern.

The Man Who Cannot Live With Charity, Sharing Other Men's Pain, Is Punished By Feeling His Own With Intolerable Anguish.

I Am The Captain Of My Destiny, I Do Not Abandon The Ship In Hard Times, But, I Do Have Sense Enough Not To Go Down With The Ship.

Waiting Is Still An Occupation. It Is Having Nothing To Wait For That Is Terrible.

Those Philosophers Who Believe In The Absolute Logic Of Truth Have Never Had To Discuss It On Close Terms With A Woman.

I Spent The Whole Evening Sitting Before A Mirror To Keep Myself Company.

It Is Stupid To Grieve For The Loss Of A Girl Friend: You Might Never Have Met Her, So You Can Do Without Her.

A Dream Is A Creation Of The Intelligence, The Creator Being Present But Not Knowing How It Will End.

Suicides Are Timid Murderers. Masochism Instead Of Sadism.

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.

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.

How Can You Have Confidence In A Woman Who Will Not Risk Entrusting Her Whole Life To You, Day And Night?

But Here's The Worst Part: The Trick To Life Lies In Hiding From Those We Hold Most Dear How Much They Mean To Is; If Not, We'd Lose Them.

Remember, Writing Poetry Is Like Making Love: One Will Never Know Whether One's Own Pleasure Is Shared.

We Never Remember Days, Only Moments.

Anchorites Used To Ill-treat Themselves In The Way They Did, So That The Common People Would Not Begrudge Them The Beatitude They Would Enjoy In Heaven.

Living Is Like Working Out A Long Addition Sum, And If You Make A Mistake In The First Two Totals You Will Never Find The Right Answer. It Means Involving Oneself In A Complicated Chain Of Circumstances.

Perfect Behavior Is Born Of Complete Indifference. Perhaps This Is Why We Always Love Madly Someone Who Treats Us With Indifference.

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.

No One Ever Lacks A Good Reason For Suicide.

We Want Realism's Wealth Of Experience And Symbolism's Depth Of Feeling. All Art Is A Problem Of Balance Between Two Opposites.

Every Luxury Must Be Paid For, And Everything Is A Luxury, Starting With Being In This World.

The Richness Of Life Lies In Memories We Have Forgotten.

We Do Not Free Ourselves From Something By Avoiding It, But Only By Living Though It.

Dawn's Faint Breath Breathes With Your Mouth At The Ends Of Empty Streets. Gray Light Your Eyes, Sweet Drops Of Dawn On Dark Hills. Your Steps And Breath Like The Wind Of Dawn Smother Houses. The City Shudders, Stones Exhale— You Are Life, An Awakening. Star Lost In The Light Of Dawn, Trill Of The Breeze, Warmth, Breath— The Night Is Done. You Are Light And Morning.

One Stops Being A Child When One Realizes That Telling One's Trouble Does Not Make It Any Better.

One Does Not Kill Oneself For Love Of A Woman, But Because Love - Any Love - Reveals Us In Our Nakedness, Our Misery, Our Vulnerability, Our Nothingness.

At Great Periods You Have Always Felt, Deep Within You, The Temptation To Commit Suicide. You Gave Yourself To It, Breached Your Own Defenses. You Were A Child. The Idea Of Suicide Was A Protest Against Life; By Dying, You Would Escape This Longing For Death.

We Can All Do Good Deeds, But Very Few Of Us Can Think Good Thoughts.

Childhood Is Not Only The Childhood We Really Had But Also The Impressions We Formed Of It In Our Adolescence And Maturity. That Is Why Childhood Seems So Long. Probably Every Period Of Life Is Multiplied By Our Reflections Upon The Next.

For Women, History Does Not Exist. Murasaki, Sappho, And Madame Lafayette Might Be Their Own Contemporaries.

You Need A Village, If Only For The Pleasure Of Leaving It. A Village Means That You Are Not Alone, Knowing That In The People, The Trees, The Earth, There Is Something That Belongs To You, Waiting For You When You Are Not There.

Why So Much Innuendo, Draped Like Ivy To Hide A Cesspool, When Everyone Knew The Cesspool Was There?

The Only Reason Why We Are Always Thinking Of Our Own Ego Is That We Have To Live With It More Continuously Than With Anyone Else's.

When Writing Poetry, It Is Not That Produces A Bright Idea, But The Bright Idea That Kindles The Fire Of.

Things Are Revealed Through The Memories We Have Of Them. Remembering A Thing Means Seeing It Only Then For The First Time.

There Comes A Day When, For Someone Who Has Persecuted Us, We Feel Only Indifference, A Weariness At His Stupidity. Then We Forgive Him.

In Fact A Man In Love Or One Consumed With Hatred Creates Symbols For Himself, As A Superstitious Man Does, From A Passion Of Conferring Uniqueness On Things Or Persons. A Man Who Knows Nothing Of Symbols Is One Of Dante's Sluggards. This Is Why Art Mirrors Itself In Primitive Rites Or Strong Passions, Seeking For Symbols, Revolving Round The Primitive Taste For Savagery, For What Is Irrational (blood And Sex).

Perfect Behaviour Is Born Of Complete Indifference.

From Someone Who Doesn't Want To Share Your Destiny, You Should Neither Accept A Cigarette

A Decision, An Action, Are Infallible Omens Of What We Shall Do Another Time, Not For Any Vague, Mystic, Astrological Reason But Because They Result From An Automatic Reaction That Will Repeat Itself.

Will Power Is Only The Tensile Strength Of One's Own Disposition. One Cannot Increase It By A Single Ounce.

Single Relationship

If It Were Possible To Have A Life Absolutely Free From Every Feeling Of Sin, What A Terrifying Vacuum It Would Be.

We Like To Have Work To Do, So As To Have The Right To Rest.

We Obtain Things When We No Longer Want Them.

All Sins Have Their Origin In A Sense Of Inferiority Otherwise Called Ambition.

Love Has The Faculty Of Making Two Lovers Seem Naked, Not In Each Other's Sight, But In Their Own.

But All Years Are Stupid. It's Only When They're Over That They Become Interesting.

Don't Mix Wine And Women.

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.

Woman Gives Herself As A Prize To The Weak And As A Prop To The Strong And No Man Ever Has What He Should.

When A Man Mourns For Someone Who Has Played Him False, It Is Not For Love Of Her, But For His Own Humiliation At Not Having Deserved Her Trust.

Hate Is Always A Clash Between Our Spirit And Someone Else's Body.

You've Got To Understand Life, Understand It When You're Young.

Are You Or Aren't You Convinced That Weakness Is A Man's Condition? How Can You Raise Yourself If You Haven't Fallen First?

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.

Men Who Have A Tempestuous Inner Life And Do Not Seek To Give Vent To It By Talking Or Writing Are Simply Men Who Have No Tempestuous Inner Life. Give Company To A Lonely Man And He Will Talk More Than Anyone.

The Search For A New Personality Is Futile; What Is Fruitful Is The Interest The Old Personality Can Take In New Activities.

It Is Not That Things Happen To Each Of Us According To His Fate, But That He Interprets What Has Happened, If He Has Power To Do So, According To His Sense Of His Own Destiny .

The Problem Is Not The Harshness Of Fate, For Anything We Want Strongly Enough We Get. The Trouble Is Rather That When We Have It We Grow Sick Of It, And Then We Should Never Blame Fate, Only Our Own Desire.

What Is To Come Will Emerge Only After Long Suffering, Long Silence.

What World Lies Beyond That Stormy Sea I Do Not Know, But Every Ocean Has A Distant Shore, And I Shall Reach It.

When You Dream, You Are An Author, But You Do Not Know How It Will End.

Love Is The Cheapest Of Religions.

It Had To Happen To You, To Concentrate Your Whole Life On One Point, And Then Discover That You Can Do Anything Except Live At That Point.

In The Mental Disturbance And Effort Of Writing, What Sustains You Is The Certainty That On Every Page There Is Something Left Unsaid.

If You Wish To Travel Far And Fast, Travel Light. Take Off All Your Envies, Jealousies, Unforgiveness, Selfishness And Fears.

Maybe It's Better Like This, Better That Everything Should Go Up In A Blaze Of Dry Grass And That People Should Begin Again.

The Only Joy In The World Is To Begin.

You Will Hear Words Old And Spent And Useless Like Costumes Left Over From Yesterday's Parties.

Artists Are The Monks Of The Bourgeois State.

A Man Succeeds In Completing A Work Only When His Qualities Transcend That Work.

A Corpse Is What's Left After Waking Too Often.

The Real Affliction Of Old Age Is Remorse.

Here's The Difficulty About Suicide: It Is An Act Of Ambition That Can Be Committed Only When One Has Passed Beyond Ambition.

It's Pointless To Cry. One Is Born And Dies Alone.

The Closing Years Of Life Are Like The End Of A Masquerade Party, When The Masks Are Dropped.

Now That I've Seen What War Is, What Civil War Is, I Know That Everybody, If One Day It Should End, Ought To Ask Himself: "and What Shall We Make Of The Fallen? Why Are They Dead?" I Wouldn't Know What To Say. Not Now, At Any Rate. Nor Does It Seem To Me That The Others Know. Perhaps Only Dead Know, And Only For Them Is The War Really Over.

We Care So Little Of Other People Than Even Christianity Urges Us To Do Good For The Love Of God.

A Work Settles Nothing, Just As The Labor Of A Whole Generation Settles Nothing. Sons, And The Morrow, Always Start Afresh.

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.

Nowadays, Suicide Is Just A Way Of Disappearing. It Is Carried Out Timidly, Quietly, And Falls Flat. It Is No Longer An Action, Only A Submission.

The Whole Problem Of Life, Then, Is This: How To Break Out Of One's Own Loneliness, How To Communicate With Others.

I Was Happy Enough; I Knew That During The Night The Whole City Might Go Up In Flames And All Its People Be Killed, But The Ravines, Houses, And Footpaths Would Wake In The Morning Calm And Unchanged.

In General, The Man Who Is Readily Disposed To Sacrifice Himself Is One Who Does Not Know How Else To Give Meaning To His Life. The Profession Of Enthusiasm Is The Most Sickening Of All Insincerities.

Misfortunes Cannot Suffice To Make A Fool Into An Intelligent Man.

The Problems That Agitate One Generation Are Exstinguished For The Next, Not Because They Have Been Solved But Because The General Lack Of Interest Sweeps Them Away.

Not Believing In Anything Is Also A Religion .

People Who Don't Know Any Better Will Always Be In The Dark Because The Power Lies In The Hands Of Men Who Take Good Care That Ordinary Folk Don't Understand, In The Hands, That Is, Of The Government, Of The Clerical Party, Of The Capitalists.

We Must Never Say, Even In Fun, That We Are Disheartened, Because Someone Might Take Us At Our Word.

Death Is Repose, But The Thought Of Death Disturbs All Repose.

Thoughts Of Death

Suffering Is By No Means A Privilege, A Sign Of Nobility, A Reminder Of God. Suffering Is A Fierce, Bestial Thing, Commonplace, Uncalled For, Natural As Air. It Is Intangible; No One Can Grasp It Or Fight Against It; It Dwells In Time - Is The Same Thing As Time; If It Comes In Fits And Starts, That Is Only So As To Leave The Sufferer More Defenseless During The Moments That Follow, Those Long Moments When One Relives The Last Bout Of Torture And Waits For The Next.

One Must Look For One Thing Only, To Find Many.

The Art Of Living Is The Art Of Knowing How To Believe Lies.

There Is Something Indecent In Words .

Reality Is A Prison, Where One Vegetates And Always Will.

There Is Only One Pleasure-that Of Being Alive. All The Rest Is Misery.

There Is Nothing Fine About Being A Child: It Is Fine, When We Are Old, To Look Back To When We Were Children.

You Don't Remember Days, You Remember Moments.

A Man Is Never Completely Alone In This World. At The Worst, He Has The Company Of A Boy, A Youth, And By And By A Grown Man - The One He Used To Be.

It Is Not That The Child Lives In A World Of Imagination, But That The Child Within Us Survives And Starts Into Life Only At Rare Moments Of Recollection, Which Makes Us Believe, And It Is Not True, That, As Children, We Were Imaginative?

What We Desire Is Not To Possess A Woman, But To Be The Only One To Possess Her.

Lessons Are Not Given, They Are Taken.

The Only Joy In The World Is To Begin. It Is Good To Be Alive Because Living Is Beginning, Always, Every Moment.

There Is An Art In Taking The Whiplash Of Suffering Full In The Face, An Art You Must Learn. Let Each Single Attack Exhaust Itself; Pain Always Makes Single Attacks, So That Its Bite May Be More Intense, More Concentrated. And You, While Its Fangs Are Implanted And Injecting Their Venom At One Spot, Do Not Forget To Offer It Another Place Where It Can Bite You, And So Relieve The Pain Of The First.

Writing Is A Fine Thing, Because It Combines The Two Pleasures Of Talking To Yourself And Talking To A Crowd.

Because, To Despise Money, One Must Have Plenty Of It.

Verrà La Morte E Avrà I Tuoi Occhi. (death Will Come And It Will Have Your Eyes.)

We Do Not Remember Days, We Remember Moments.

The Only Way To Escape The Abyss Is To Look At It, Gauge It, Sound It Out And Descend Into It.

But The Real, Tremendous Truth Is This: Suffering Serves No Purpose Whatever.

The Face Of The Night Will Be An Old Wound That Reopens Each Evening, Impassive And Living. The Distant Silence Will Ache Like A Soul, Mute, In The Dark. We'll Speak To The Night As It's Whispering Softly.

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.

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 Slowness Of Time, For A Man Who Knows Nothing Will Happen, Is Brutal.

I Thought Of How Many Places There Are In The World That Belong In This Way To Someone, Who Has It In His Blood Beyond Anyone Else's Understanding.

You Cannot Insult A Man More Atrociously Than By Refusing To Believe He Is Suffering .

No Woman Marries For Money; They Are All Clever Enough, Before Marrying A Millionaire, To Fall In Love With Him First.

The Art Of Living Is The Art Of Knowing How To Believe Lies. The Fearful Thing About It Is That, Not Knowing What Truth May Be, We Can Still Recognize Lies.

Idleness Makes Hours Pass Slowly And Years Swiftly. Activity Makes The Hours Short And The Years Long.

Narrating Incredible Things As Though They Were Real Old System; Narrating Realities As Though They Were Incredible The New.

It Is Not The Actual Enjoyment Of Pleasure That We Desire. What We Want Is To Test The Futility Of That Pleasure, So As To Be No Longer Obsessed By It.

Trending Author

Category