Quotes from Giacomo Leopardi

Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require.

Every day we lose something; one of the illusions, which are our only riches, perishes or diminishes. Experience or truth divests us every day of part of our possessions. We do not live, except in losing.

No one is so completely disenchanted with the world, nor knows it so thoroughly, nor is so much disgusted with it, but that when it begins to smile upon him he does not become partially reconciled to it.

People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which what they are not.

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the real world since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.

The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one's own knowledge is not to overstep them.

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.

Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.

Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.

Rest forever, tired heart. The final illusion has perished. The one we believed eternal is gone. Just like that. Out the door desire follows hope. Rest forever. Enough throbbing. Nothing deserves your attention nor is the earth worth a sigh. Bitterness and boredom is life, nothing else ever, and the world is mud. Quiet now. Despair for the last time. Fate gives us dying as a gift. Now turn from the hills, the ugly hidden power which rules for the common evil and the infinite vanity of it all.

Freedom is the dream you dream While putting thought in chains again --

He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present.

Amami, per Dio. Ho bisogno d'amore, amore, amore, fuoco, entusiasmo, vita

Seated here in contemplations lost, my thought discovers vaster space beyond, supernal silence and unfathomed peace

To that creature, being born, Its birthday is a day to mourn

Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.

Everything that is ended, everything that is last, naturally awakens in man a feeling of sorrow and melancholy. At the same time, it excites a pleasurable feeling, pleasurable in that very sorrow, and that is because of the infiniteness of the idea that is contained in the words ended, last, etc. ( Thus by their nature such words are, and always will be, poetic, however ordinary and common they are, in whatever language and style.)

Reason is the enemy of all greatness: reason is the enemy of nature: nature is great, reason is small. I mean that it will be more or less difficult for a man to be great the more he is governed by reason, that few can be great (and in art and poetry perhaps no one) unless they are governed by illusions.

For if life, once empty of attachments and sweet illusions, is a starless winter night, still it's enough for me of mortal fate and comfort and revenge that I can lie here lazy, lifeless on the grass, watching the sea and earth and sky, and smile.

E' curioso a vedere che quasi tutti gli uomini che valgono molto hanno le maniere semplici; e che quasi sempre le maniere semplici sono prese per indizio di poco valore.

L'uomo è infelice perchè è incontentabile.

All is mystery except our pain.

Men are wretched by necessity, and determined to believe themselves wretched by accident.

Io non ho bisogno di stima, né di gloria, né di altre cose simili; ma ho bisogno d'amore.