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
We never remember days, only moments.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is made up of moments rather than the passage of time.
This quote emphasizes the idea that our experiences and memories are shaped by significant moments rather than the mere count of days. It suggests that it is the intensity and quality of specific experiences that truly matter in our lives, rather than a chronological record of time passing.
Themes
MomentsMemoryLifeExperienceTime
In practice
Example use cases
This quote is perfect for a speech about making the most of our lives.
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
There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.
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
Similar quotes
When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.
Isak DinesenRead
Everything you cherish_x000D_ _x000D_ Throws you over in the end_x000D_ _x000D_ Thorns will grab your ankles_x000D_ _x000D_ From the gardens that you tend.
Robert HunterRead
Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.
Ian McewanRead
Cancer has made me mentally and spiritually stronger. But as my life starts to go back to normal, I find that some of my old, bad habits are still lurking in the shadows.
Suleika JaouadRead
It's much easier for me to make major life, multi-million dollar decisions, than it is to decide on a carpet for my front porch. That's the truth.
Oprah WinfreyRead
The real fear isn't rejection, but that there won't be enough time in your life to write all the stories that you have in you.
Ray BradburyRead