“Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there?”

— Cesare Pavese, The Devil in the Hills (1949), Chapter 18

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.”

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”