“Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.”

— Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living (1938)

About Cesare Pavese

1908 – 1950

Italian poet and novelist, author of the diary "This Business of Living".

“Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.”

“Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it—only then—for the first time.”

“If all this were true, how easy it would be to understand people.”

“Time, in its stealthy gliding, cheats us all without our notice; nothing goes more swiftly than do the years.”

“Youth comes but once in a lifetime.”

“O let not Time deceive you, you cannot conquer Time.”

“The Bird of Time has but a little way to fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”

“Years following years steal something ev'ry day. At last they steal us from ourselves away.”

“Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.”