Skip to content

Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?

— Cesare Pavese This Business of Living (1935)

Another quote →

Topics

Relationships

More quotes by Cesare Pavese

He told me that it isn't what you do but how you do it that shows whether you are clever or not.

The Moon and the Bonfire (1950)

You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.

The Beach (1941)

The real affliction of old age is remorse.

The Moon and the Bonfire (1950)

The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.

This Business of Living (1935)

In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.

This Business of Living (1935)

All Cesare Pavese quotes →

You may also like

Science, when applied to personal relationships, is always just wrong.

E. M. Forster Selected Letters (1983)

Even walking side by side for a long time, some relationships never touch the heart.

Sanu Sharma

Perhaps it is the deprivation that keeps hearts connected. Once everything is fulfilled, wings sprout in everyone’s heart, and they fly off to different destinations. How can a relationship stay warm with just the body, when the heart is absent?"

Sanu Sharma

In a relationship, if there aren't equal rights to agree and disagree, it won't lead anywhere, and I don't want to be bound in a relationship that goes nowhere.

Sanu Sharma

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Cesare Pavese (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.