Cesare Pavese Quotes

Men in their generations are like the leaves of the trees. The wind blows and one year's leaves are scattered on the ground; but the trees burst into bud and put on fresh ones when the spring comes round.

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.

Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.

The future will be the child of the past and the present, even if a rebellious child.

The Past, The Present, For the Future

Nothing that is can pause or stay; / The moon will wax, the moon will wane, / The mist and cloud will turn to rain, / The rain to mist and cloud again, / Tomorrow be today.

A new year can begin only because the old year ends.

Still ending, and beginning still.

Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.

The mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because the new is always left in the place of the old.

Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again.

Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal.

Everything changes, nothing is lost.

The cradle of the future is the grave of the past.

Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.

Life depends on change, and renewal.

The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

It seems to me that life is always undoing for us something that we have just laboriously done.

I think we need to remember...that a lot of energy was put into changing things to get us to the point where we are now. But being where we are now doesn't mean that we don't have to put in the same kind of energy to get us to a place where we ought to be.

After me, the Revolution - or, rather the ideas which formed it - will resume their course. It will be like a book from which the marker is removed, and one starts to read again at the page where one left off.

We therefore must keep the faith, despite the defeat of policies, because men pass with their policies whilst generations follow each other.

No effect of work can be eternal.

That's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory— hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can built off our pasts and make future.

We must look to the rising generation for the restoration of the country.

Whatever you have is gonna die and you are gonna have to rebirth something new. You have to be willing to ride the waves.