Cesare Quotes & Sayings

The severity of punishments ought to be relative to the state of the nation itself. Stronger and more easily felt impressions have to be made on a people only just out of the savage state. A lightning strike is needed to stop a fierce lion who is provoked by a gunshot. — Cesare Beccaria

How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night? — Cesare Pavese

Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world. — Cesare Pavese

It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her. — Cesare Pavese

Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference. — Cesare Pavese

I myself owe everything to French books. They developed in my soul the sentiments of humanity which had been stifled by eight years of fanatical and servile education. — Cesare Beccaria

For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries. — Cesare Pavese

My heart is yours, Cesare. And we are both damned for it. — Jeanne Kalogridis

I was born with a stain. A mark. Like the mark of Cain. But is the mark of my father, my family. The mark of Borgia. I have tried to be other than I am. And I have failed. And If I have failed you in the process, I am truly sorry. — Cesare Borgia

The whole problem of life is this: how to break out of one's own solitude, how to communicate with others. — Cesare Pavese

At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it, breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life; by dying, you would escape this longing for death. — Cesare Pavese

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. — Cesare Beccaria

It is impossible to anticipate all of the misdeeds engendered by the universal conflict of human passions. They multiply at a compound rate with the growth in population and the interlacing of particular interests that cannot be directed with geometrical precision towards the public utility. — Cesare Beccaria

We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God . — Cesare Pavese

Louis-Cesare looked pained. Ray was even dirtier than I was, and his bright red briefs had gotten a tear across the butt at some point, flashing a glimpse of hairy cheek whenever he moved. An awesome trophy he was not. — Karen Chance

For a punishment to be just it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing crimes. — Cesare Beccaria

One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one's trouble does not make it any better. — Cesare Pavese

There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life. — Cesare Pavese

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 Pavese

In the world of football and of sport in general there is still a taboo around homosexuality. Everyone ought to live freely with themselves, their desires and their sentiments. We must all work for a sporting culture that respects the individual in every manifestation of his truth and freedom. — Cesare Prandelli

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that it has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are of such a nature. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. — Cesare Beccaria

Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven. — Cesare Pavese

Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism. — Cesare Pavese

All is the same
time has gone by
some day you come
some day you'll die
someone has died
long time ago. — Cesare Pavese

It's pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone ... — Cesare Pavese

Love is the cheapest of religions. — Cesare Pavese

A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself. — Cesare Pavese

happy is the nation without a history — Cesare Beccaria

We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it. — Cesare Pavese

From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette — Cesare Pavese

I will lead mankind into a new world! You cannot kill me! No man can murder me! — Cesare Borgia

Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it. — Cesare Pavese

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 Pavese

By 'justice', I understand nothing more than that bond which is necessary to keep the interest of individuals united, without which men would return to their original state of barbarity. All punishments which exceed the necessity of preserving this bond are, in their nature, unjust. — Cesare Beccaria

The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment. — Cesare Pavese

The act the act must not be a revenge. It must be a calm, weary renunciation, a closing of accounts, a private, rhythmic deed. The last remark. — Cesare Pavese

Cesare persuaded King Louis to lend him an entire army to defeat me. I'm flattered. — Bartolomeo D'Alviano

A corpse is what's left after waking too often. — Cesare Pavese

The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows. — Cesare Pavese

Genius is one of the many forms of insanity. — Cesare Lombroso

We don't remember days,we remember moments. — Cesare Pavese

Can we just do this?" Ray asked tightly, clinging to Zheng's already slightly elongated arm. Because Louis-Cesare wasn't the only one with a master power around here.
"Let go," Zheng told him. "I'm the rubber band; you're the spitball. And spitballs don't hold on to rubber bands."
"Die in a fire," Ray told him savagely. But he let go. — Karen Chance

Indifference

This hate has blossomed like a living love,
grieving, watching its own exhaustion.
It seeks a face, it seeks flesh, as though it were love.

The worldly flesh and the voices that spoke
are dead, all has shuddered away,
all life hangs on a voice.
Days pass in bitter ecstasy to the sad
caress of the voice that returns
and drains the blood from our faces. Not without sweetness
that voice returns to the mind exhausted
and trembling: once it trembled for me.

But the flesh does not tremble. Only love
could set it alight, this hate seeks it out.
All the possessions, all the flesh and all the voices
in the world cannot equal the burning caress
of that body and those eyes. In the bitter ecstasy
that kills itself, this hate still finds
each day a glance, a broken word,
and grasps them, hungrily, like love. — Cesare Pavese

Nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission. — Cesare Pavese

If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more? No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight - they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves. — Cesare Pavese

When a man mourns for someone who has played him false, it is not for love of her, but for his own humiliation at not having deserved her trust. — Cesare Pavese

The cadence of suffering has begun. — Cesare Pavese

Klopstock was questioned regarding the meaning of a passage in his poem. He replied, 'God and I both knew what it meant once; now God alone knows.' — Cesare Lombroso

Unless some other factor is operative, in large, weak and underpopulated states, the luxury of ostentation prevails over that of comfort; but in countries which are more populous than extensive, the luxury of comfort always diminishes ostentation. — Cesare Beccaria

It is a considerable point in all good legislation to determine exactly the credibility of witnesses and the proofs of a crime. Every reasonable man, everyone, that is, whose ideas have a certain interconnection and whose feelings accord with those of other men, may be a witness. The true measure of his credibility is nothing other than his interest in telling or not telling the truth; for this reason it is frivolous to insist that women are too weak [to be good witnesses], childish to insist that civil death in a condemned man has the same effects as a real death, and meaningless to insist on the infamy of the infamous, when they have no interest in lying. — Cesare Beccaria

Woman gives herself as a prize to the weak and as a prop to the strong and no man ever has what he should. — Cesare Pavese

Alexander never did what he said, Cesare never said what he did. — Niccolo Machiavelli

We have to get the Diamond. And Cesare's head."
They looked at me.
"Why the head?" Doolittle asked.
"Because it's easy to carry and I can torture it for a long time." And I didn't just say it out loud, did I? I checked their faces. Yep, I did. — Ilona Andrews

My lord ... I can explain-," Louis-Cesare began, looking less than certain that he could do anything of the kind.
Radu held up a hand. "I am sure there is a perfectly good reason why my niece is naked and tied to her bed. I am also equally certain that I do not wish to hear it". — Karen Chance

Louis-Cesare. It's good to finally have you in hand. — Karen Chance

War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values. — Cesare Pavese

One enemy at the time. — Sarah Dunant

Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time. — Cesare Pavese

I was hoping that the first time you expressed affection for me, it would not be in a room full of strangers. And that you would not have just said it to a sniveling creature like that Raymond!"
"I expressed affection for Ray?"
"Yes!"
"Man, I really must be drunk." Louis-Cesare just looked at me. I blinked politely back, until I realized that he expected a response. — Karen Chance

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.
You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. — Cesare Pavese

The fault no child ever loses is the one he was most punished for. — Cesare Beccaria

The thing most feared in secret always happens ... All it needs is a little courage. The more the pain grows clear and definite, the more the instinct for life asserts itself and the thought of suicide recedes. It seemed easy when I thought of it. Weak women have done it. It needs humility not pride. I am sickened by all this. Not words. Action. I shall write no more. — Cesare Pavese

The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal. — Cesare Pavese

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared. — Cesare Pavese

You are bruised.'
'Am I? I hadn't noticed.'
'Lucrezia says you killed the bastard.'
... Cesare's hands were shaking. Hard, sun-darkened hands made to hold a sword or lance unflinchingly, but they trembled against my pale skin. — Sara Poole

We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites. — Cesare Pavese

The moral and political principles that govern men are derived from three sources: revelation, natural law, and the artificial conventions of society. With regard to its main purpose, there is no comparison between the first and the others; but all three are alike in that they all lead towards happiness in this mortal life. — Cesare Beccaria

No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the example of the world around him. And a man, no matter how conservative, shows his own worth by his personal deviation from that pattern. — Cesare Pavese

Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce. — Cesare Pavese

A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience. — Cesare Pavese

The world, the future, is now within you as your past, as experience, skill in technique, and the rich, everlasting mystery is found to be childish you that, at the time, you made no effort to possess. — Cesare Pavese

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

Love is desire for knowledge. — Cesare Pavese

Laws are the terms by which independent and isolated men united to form a society, once they tired of living in a perpetual state of war where the enjoyment of liberty was rendered useless by the uncertainty of its preservation. They sacrificed a portion of this liberty so that they could enjoy the remainder in security and peace. — Cesare Beccaria

The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come. — Cesare Pavese

I was the dhampir daughter of the family patriarch, the little known stain on an otherwise immaculate record. Louis-Cesare, on the other hand, was vamp royalty. The only Child of Mircea's younger, and far stranger, brother Radu, he was a first-level master
the highest and rarest vampire rank.
A month ago, the prince and the pariah had crossed paths because we had one thing in common: we were very good at killing things. And Mircea's bug-eyed crazy brother Vlad had needed killing if anyone ever had. The collaboration hadn't exactly been stress free, but to my surprise, we eventually sorted things out and got the job done. By the end, I'd even started to think that it was kind of nice, having someone to watch my back for a change.
Sometimes, I could be really stupid. — Karen Chance

In the Garden of Eden Eve showed more courage than Adam.. when the serpent offered the forbidden fruit.
She knew that there was something better than paradise — Cesare Borgia

(About Cesare Borgia) What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes? Such was the man that Machiavel prefers to all the great geniuses of his time, and to the heroes of antiquity, and of which he finds the life and action make a good example for those that fortune favors. — Frederick The Great

Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman. — Cesare Pavese

Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always. — Cesare Pavese

The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it. — Cesare Pavese

The constellations this year seem unfavourable to rebels. — Cesare Borgia

We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts. — Cesare Pavese

Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state. — Cesare Pavese

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

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears. — Cesare Pavese

Certainly, to have a woman who waits at home for you, who will sleep with you, gives a warm feeling like having something you must say; it makes you glow, keeps you company, helps you to live. — Cesare Pavese

The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities. — Cesare Pavese

In order that punishment should not be an act of violence perpetrated by one or many upon a private citizen, it is essential that it should be public, speedy, necessary, the minimum possible in the given circumstances, proportionate to the crime, and determined by the law. — Cesare Beccaria

The punishment of death is the war of a nation against a citizen whose destruction it judges to be necessary or useful. — Cesare Beccaria

Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there? — Cesare Pavese

The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else's. — Cesare Pavese

My task is not to tyrannize but to destroy tyrants. — Cesare Borgia

The lawgiver ought to be gentle, lenient and humane. The lawgiver ought to be a skilled architect who raises his building on the foundation of self-love, and the interest of all ought to be the product of the interests of each. — Cesare Beccaria

I am the captain of my destiny, I do not abandon the ship in hard times, But, I do have sense enough not to go down with the ship. — Cesare Pavese

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

When writing poetry, it is not that produces a bright idea, but the bright idea that kindles the fire of. — Cesare Pavese

The only joy in the world is to begin. — Cesare Pavese

There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him. — Cesare Pavese

No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first. — Cesare Pavese