Giacomo Leopardi Quotes & Sayings

You can be happy indeed if you have breathing space from pain. — Giacomo Leopardi

A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language. — Giacomo Leopardi

The commonplace expression that life is nothing but a play is verified above all in this: the world speaks absolutely consistently in one way and acts absolutely consistently in another. — Giacomo Leopardi

Nothing in the world is so rare as a person one can always put up with. — Giacomo Leopardi

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. — Giacomo Leopardi

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.) — Giacomo Leopardi

Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry. — Giacomo Leopardi

The greater part of the people we assign to educate our sons we know for certain are not educated. Yet we do not doubt that they can give what they have not received, a thing which cannot be otherwise acquired. — Giacomo Leopardi

The Infinite
It was always dear to me, this solitary hill,
and this hedgerow here, that closes out my view,
from so much of the ultimate horizon.
But sitting here, and watching here, in thought,
I create interminable spaces,
greater than human silences, and deepest
quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.
When I hear the wind, blowing among these leaves,
I go on to compare that infinite silence
with this voice, and I remember the eternal
and the dead seasons, and the living present,
and its sound, so that in this immensity
my thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck seems sweet
to me in this sea. — Giacomo Leopardi

I find it awfully difficult to determine if the habit of talking about oneself at length runs contrary to the basic rules of propriety, or if instead the man exempt from this vice is rare. — Giacomo Leopardi

Boredom is the most sublime of all human emotions because it expresses the fact that the human spirit, in a certain sense, is greater than the entire universe. Boredom is an expression of a profound despair at not finding anything that can satisfy the soul's boundless needs. — Giacomo Leopardi

There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical. — Giacomo Leopardi

The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion. — Giacomo Leopardi

People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not. — Giacomo Leopardi

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. — Giacomo Leopardi

Men seldom act from a correct sense of what may be harmful or useful to them. — Giacomo Leopardi

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. — Giacomo Leopardi

The old man, especially if he is in society in the privacy of his thoughts, though he may protest the opposite, never stops believing that, through some singular exception of the universal rule, he can in some unknown and inexplicable way still make an impression on women. — Giacomo Leopardi

We remember childhood as the fabulous years of our lives, and nations remember their childhood as fabulous years. — Giacomo Leopardi

The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets. — Giacomo Leopardi

In all climates, under all skies, man's happiness is always somewhere else. — Giacomo Leopardi

If the best company is that which we leave feeling most satisfied with ourselves, it follows that it is the company we leave most bored. — Giacomo Leopardi

The artist's conception of his art or the scientist's of his science is usually as great as his conception of his own worth is small. — Giacomo Leopardi

Then from anguish, wishing to cry out and trembling, eyes full of doleful tears, I tore myself from sleep. But in my mind remained his vivid image. And in the uncertain ray of sunshine, I believed I saw him still. — Giacomo Leopardi

He who has little communication with people is seldom a misanthrope. True misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world. This is because it is practical experience of life, and certainly not philosophy, that makes people hate their fellows. — Giacomo Leopardi

Man is doomed either squander his youth, which is the only time he has to store provisions for the coming years and provide for his own well-being, or to spend his youth procuring pleasures in advance for that time of life when he will be too old to enjoy them. — Giacomo Leopardi

Nature, with her customary beneficence, has ordained that man shall not learn how to live until the reasons for living are stolen from him, that he shall find no enjoyment until he has become incapable of vivid pleasure. — Giacomo Leopardi

No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance. — Giacomo Leopardi

This solitary hill has always been dear to me
And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of
The endless horizon.
But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts
Endless spaces beyond the hedge,
An all encompassing silence and a deeply profound quiet,
To the point that my heart is almost overwhelmed.
And when I hear the wind rustling through the trees
I compare its voice to the infinite silence.
And eternity occurs to me, and all the ages past,
And the present time, and its sound.
Amidst this immensity my thought drowns:
And to founder in this sea is sweet to me. — Giacomo Leopardi

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. — Giacomo Leopardi

There are some centuries which - apart from everything else - in the art and other disciplines presume to remake everything because they know how to make nothing. — Giacomo Leopardi

What do you do there, moon, in the sky? Tell me what you do, silent moon. When evening comes you rise and go contemplating wastelands; then you set. — Giacomo Leopardi

That is why all great men are modest: they consistently measure themselves not in comparison to other people but to the idea of perfection ever present in their minds, an ideal infinitely clearer and greater than any common people have, and they also realize how far they are from fulfilling their ideal. — Giacomo Leopardi

It's interesting to observe that almost all truly worthy men have simple manners, and that simple manners are almost always taken as a sign of little worth — Giacomo Leopardi

He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die. — Giacomo Leopardi

Men are ready to suffer anything from others or from heaven itself, provided that, when it comes to words, they are untouched. — Giacomo Leopardi

Freedom is the dream you dream
While putting thought in chains again
— Giacomo Leopardi

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

It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist. — Giacomo Leopardi

Since the world never faults a man who refuses to yield ... it is generally recognized that weak men live in obedience to the world's will, while the strong obey only their own. — Giacomo Leopardi

People are ashamed, not of the injustices they do, but of those they receive. And so, in order that the unjust person should be ashamed, there is no other way than to give as good as one gets. — Giacomo Leopardi

Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age. — Giacomo Leopardi

The end of pain we take as happiness. — Giacomo Leopardi

The thought that really crushes us is the thought of the futility of life of which death is the visible manifestation. — Giacomo Leopardi

Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness. — Giacomo Leopardi

Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require. — Giacomo Leopardi

If we happen to be praised on account of qualities which we formerly despised, our estimation of those qualities immediately rises. — Giacomo Leopardi

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

No one is so completely disenchanted with the world, or knows it so thoroughly, or is so utterly disgusted with it, that when it begins to smile upon him he does not become partially reconciled to it. — Giacomo Leopardi

Men do not so much hate an evil-doer, or evil itself, as they hate the man who calls evil by its real name. — Giacomo Leopardi

Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything. — Giacomo Leopardi

Every man remembers his childhood as a kind of mythical age, just as every nation's childhood is its mythical age. — Giacomo Leopardi

Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire's rewards. — Giacomo Leopardi

I may be wrong, but it seems rare in our age to find a widely praised person whose own mouth is not the source of that praise. — Giacomo Leopardi

He who doubts, knows - knows as much as can be known. — Giacomo Leopardi

If content with himself and mankind, a man is never harsh or curt. — Giacomo Leopardi

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