Svevo Quotes

#1. I studied literature and Italian at Yale. I wrote my thesis about Italo Svevo, one of my heroes.

Nathaniel Rich

#2. And it is true that life lacks the monotony of museums. There come days which seem worthy of being framed, but they are so full of conflicting sounds, of line and color and living, burning light that they never become tedious.

Italo Svevo

#3. Misunderstanding women is a clear sign of scant virility.

Italo Svevo

#4. In psychoanalysis there is never repetition, neither of the same images nor

Italo Svevo

#5. It is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent.

Italo Svevo

#6. To kill someone, even treacherously is more manly than to wound a friend by betraying his confidence.

Italo Svevo

#7. Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I imagined? Perhaps it was this very doubt that bound me to my vice, because life is so much pleasanter if one is able to believe in one's own latent greatness

Italo Svevo

#8. A novelist who ranks with Proust , Kafka , Musil and his friend James Joyce as one of the enduring pillars of Modernism.

Italo Svevo

#9. Most people feel that the world looks like the photograph. I've always assumed that the photograph is nearly right, but that little bit by which it misses makes it miss by a mile. This is what I grope at.

Martin Gayford

#10. Everyone tends to remember the past with greater fervor as the present gains greater importance.

Italo Svevo

#11. Everyone remembers his past with greater vividness as the present becomes more important. Dying men in their last delirium are supposed to see their whole life spread out before them.

Italo Svevo

#12. The great modern novel of the comic-pathetic illusion of freedom is Confessions of Zeno .

Italo Svevo

#13. You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.

Italo Svevo

#14. It was a great fucking time, the short era of disaster euphoria, for nothing enhances pleasures and blocks guilt like a looming cataclysm.

Aleksandar Hemon

#15. The sun didn't illuminate me! When you are old, you remain in shadow, even when you have wit.

Italo Svevo

#16. My sister was always very motherly, babysitting and stuff.

Zooey Deschanel

#17. I wanted again May roses in December. I

Italo Svevo

#18. I love what I do, and when I don't love what I do, I'll make a change.

Katy Perry

#19. What are the "ifs" and "buts" that limit my enjoyment of life?

John Powell

#20. When will you discover that it would be a good idea to memorize your life, even the large part of it that will revolt you?

Italo Svevo

#21. Under the law established by the possessor of the greatest number of devices, sickness and the sick will flourish.

Italo Svevo

#22. Unlike other sicknesses, life is always fatal. It doesn't tolerate therapies. It would be like stopping the holes that we have in our bodies, believing them wounds. We would die of strangulation the moment we were treated.

Italo Svevo

#23. Health doesn't analyze itself, nor does it look at itself in the mirror. Only we sick people know something about ourselves.

Italo Svevo

#24. A preached immorality is more to be punished than an immoral action. You arrive at murder through love or through hate; you propagandize murder only through wickedness.

Italo Svevo

#25. Tears throw a veil over our faults and allow us to accuse fate without fear or contradiction.

Italo Svevo

#26. True religion, indeed, is that which does not have to be avowed in order to provide the solace that at times ... if only rarely ... you cannot do without.

Italo Svevo

#27. Whenever I look at a mountain I always expect it to turn into a volcano.

Italo Svevo

#28. Pain and love - the whole of life, in short - cannot be looked on as a disease just because they make us suffer.

Italo Svevo

#29. When my eyes closed, however, in the darkness I saw that her words had created a new world, like all words that are not true. I

Italo Svevo

#30. If only it were God's will that printed and written materials have as much influence on the people as the princes and their censors fear! Considering the countless good books we have, the world would have changed for the better a long time ago.

Franz Grillparzer

#31. Sorrow and love
life, in other words
cannot be considered a sickness because they hurt.

Italo Svevo

#32. Complete freedom consists of being able to do what you like, provided you also do something you like less.

Italo Svevo

#33. There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and ... the third I can't remember.

Italo Svevo

#34. My idea of a good herbalist isn't someone who knows the uses of forty different herbs, but someone who knows how to use one herb in forty different ways.

Svevo Brooks

#35. I will have to make tactical decisions, technical decisions and emotional decisions. This time it was a tactical one.

Tony Adams

#36. The fancies of wine are authentic events.

Italo Svevo