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
There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the moment when we move past resentment toward those who have harmed us, ultimately leading to forgiveness.
Cesare Pavese's quote emphasizes the transformation of emotions that can occur in response to someone who has wronged us. It suggests that over time, the pain inflicted by another person can fade into indifference, allowing us to let go of the anger and negativity that once consumed us. This shift indicates emotional growth and a capacity for forgiveness, showcasing the natural human response to heal from past grievances.
Themes
ForgivenessIndifferenceResentmentHealingGrowth
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'There comes a day when we realize that forgiveness is the key to our freedom.'
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
We cannot repent for someone else. But we can forgive someone else, refusing to hold hostage those whom the Lord seeks to set free!
Neal A. MaxwellRead
In a recent interview, General Norman Schwartzkof was asked if he thought there was room for forgiveness toward the people who have harboured and abetted the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on America. His answer..."I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting.
Norman SchwarzkopfRead
By experience; by a sense of human frailty; by a perception of "the soul of goodness in things evil;" by a cheerful trust in human nature; by a strong sense of God's love; by long and disciplined realization of the atoning love of Christ; only thus can we get a free, manly, large, princely spirit of forgiveness.
Frederick William RobertsonRead
Let us go back to the Lord. The Lord never tires of forgiving: never! It is we who tire of asking his forgiveness. Let us ask for the grace not to tire of asking forgiveness, because he never tires of forgiving.
Pope FrancisRead
I don't forgive people because I'm weak, I forgive them because I am strong enough to know people make mistakes.
Marilyn MonroeRead
Forgiving is tough. Excusing is easy. What a mistake it is to confuse forgiving with being mushy, soft, gutless, and oh, so understanding. Before we forgive, we stiffen our spine and we hold a person accountable. And only then, in tough-minded judgment, can we do the outrageously impossible thing: we can forgive.
Lewis B. SmedesRead