Primo Levi Quotes

it so often happens that, when men are convinced that they have to die, a desire to bear themselves well and to leave life's stage with dignity conquers all other sensations.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.

It is my hope and my belief that you will be able to report that I died with dignity, without animal fear and without bravado. I owe that much to myself.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

We see your willingness to die beautifully. We don’t see the need to die beautifully.

For months people have been begging me to come here for this Kamikaze operation. We will die well. The fact that we are taking a role in a great moment is history is a great honor.

I am proud to have lied. Lying under torture is not easy. In the face of torture, a person with dignity lies. Enduring torture is very difficult ... The pain is unbearable; you can not imagine how. I am proud to have lied, because I saved my comrades from the same torture and from death.

Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.

Even if you've been a coward all your life, death is a heroic act.

Death with honor is better than life... life with dishonor.

Is there no bright reversion in the sky, For those who greatly think or bravely die?

If man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?

When all the blandishments of life are gone, The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.

You cannot throw words like heroism and sacrifice and nobility and honor away without abandoning the qualities they express.

No man need fear death, he need fear only that he may die without having known his greatest power: the power of his free will to give his life for others

He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them.

He who dies for virtue does not perish.

The man who can be compelled knows not how to die.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die.

In one horrible moment the last piece of the prophecy became clear. So bid him take care, bid him look where he leaps, As life may be death and death life again reaps. He had to leap, and by his death, the others would live. That was it. That was what Sandwich had been trying to say all along, and by now he believed in Sandwich. He put on a final burst of speed, just like the coach taught him in track. He gave everything he had. In the last few steps before the canyon he felt a sharp pain in the back of his leg, and then the ground gave way under his feet. Gregor the Overlander leaped.

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.

He then alone will strictly be called brave who is fearless of a noble death, and of all such chances as come upon us with sudden death in their train.

Perhaps a hero is someone who doesn’t register his own vulnerability. Is it courage, then, if you’re too daft to know you’re mortal?