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
Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.
Interpretation
Waiting can be a meaningful activity, but waiting without purpose is disheartening.
This quote by Cesare Pavese highlights the idea that waiting itself can hold value and significance. It suggests that having a purpose or something to look forward to while waiting can provide solace, while the lack of purpose in waiting can lead to a sense of despair and meaninglessness in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about patience and resilience.
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.
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.
There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.
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.
The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.
Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.
A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the rabbit.
Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.
Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.
At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake".
Is everybody in?... Is everybody in?... Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin... The program for this evening is not new. You've seen this entertainment through and through. You've seen your birth, your life and death. You might recall all the rest. Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.