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