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

— Cesare Pavese, The Beach (1941), Chapter 4

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.”

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

“Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law.”

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

“All that glisters is not gold.”

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

“And one man in his time plays many parts.”

“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.”