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.
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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.
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There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.
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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.
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The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
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Similar quotes
Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself.
Corrie Ten BoomRead
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
If I say, "Yes, I forgive, but I cannot forgive," as though the God, who twice a day washes all the sands on all the shores of all the world, could not wash such memories from my mind, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
Amy CarmichaelRead
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
I don't forgive people because I'm weak, I forgive them because I am strong enough to know people make mistakes.
Marilyn MonroeRead
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