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.
Cesare PaveseRead
There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that life is a gift and should be appreciated; those who take it for granted miss its value.
Cesare Pavese highlights the importance of cherishing life, as boredom represents a disconnect from the richness of experiences it offers. The quote implies that mercy is available to all who seek to find joy and meaning in life, whereas those who are indifferent and dissatisfied miss out on the profound beauty that existence can provide.
Themes
MercyBoredomLifeAppreciationMeaning
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about finding passion in what we do.
More from Cesare Pavese
All quotes →Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
Cesare PaveseRead
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.
Cesare PaveseRead
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.
Cesare PaveseRead
The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
Cesare PaveseRead
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.
Cesare PaveseRead
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Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
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We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
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This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted.
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Calumny is only the noise of madmen.
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Evil doesn’t have to be an overt act; it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil.
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Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things. That is exactly what things were originally made for.
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