Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Cesare Pavese

Italian Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic and Translator

"To have sinned means that you are convinced that, in some mysterious way, what you have done will bring misfortune on you in the future; that it has broken some mysterious law of harmony, and is a link in a chain of past and future discords."

"We forgive others when it suits us."

"We are all capable of evil thoughts, but only very rarely of evil deeds: we can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts."

"Lessons are not given, they are taken."

"The only joy in the world is to begin."

"It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and it is not true, that, as children, we were imaginative."

"Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in the world."

"Religion consists in believing that everything which happens is extraordinarily important. It can never disappear from the world, precisely for this reason."

"To know the world, one must construct it."

"To be a genius is to achieve complete possession of one's own experience, body, rhythm, and memories."

"We don’t remember days; we remember moments."

"One ceases to be a child when one realizes that telling one’s trouble does not make it any better."