Quotes from Cesare Pavese

Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.

We like to have work to do, so as to have the right to rest.

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

One must look for one thing only, to find many.

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.

A work settles nothing, just as the labor of a whole generation settles nothing. Sons, and the morrow, always start afresh.

He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.

What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.

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.

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 .

We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.

The richness of life lies in the memories we have forgotten.

There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.

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.

No one ever kills himself for the love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.

No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.