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
Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is a complex process where early mistakes can lead to ongoing challenges.
Cesare Pavese uses the metaphor of a long addition sum to illustrate that life is a complex endeavor structured by many intertwined events and decisions. If errors are made early on in critical areas, it can alter the entire trajectory of one's existence, making it difficult to reach an accurate or fulfilling outcome later on.
Themes
LifeMistakesChoicesCircumstancesDecisions
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about resilience, one might say: 'Remember that living is like working out a long addition sum; early mistakes can shape your entire path.'
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.
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
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