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
You can be happy indeed if you have breathing space from pain.
Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require.
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.
Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire's rewards.
The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets.
There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical.
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.
The thought that really crushes us is the thought of the futility of life of which death is the visible manifestation.
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.
Nothing in the world is so rare as a person one can always put up with.
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.
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.
The artisan or scientist or the follower of whatever discipline who has the habit of comparing himself not with other followers but with the discipline itself will have a lower opinion of himself, the more excellent he is.
In all climates, under all skies, man's happiness is always somewhere else.