Giacomo Leopardi
Giacomo Leopardi
Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardiwas an Italian poet, philosopher, essayist and philologist. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century. Although he lived in a secluded town in the ultra-conservative Papal States, he came in touch with the main thoughts of the Enlightenment, and, by his own literary evolution, created a remarkable and renowned poetic work, related to the Romantic era. The extraordinarily lyrical quality of his...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth29 June 1798
CountryItaly
Giacomo Leopardi quotes about
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.
The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion.
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.
The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one s own knowledge is not to overstep them.
Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.
People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.
Irresolute men are sometimes very persistent in their undertakings, because if they give up their designs they would have to make a second resolution.
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.
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.
Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.
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.
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.
He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die.
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.