Giacomo Leopardi > Quotes

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

“Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone di pensieri

“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

“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

“Quella vita ch'è una cosa bella, non è la vita che si conosce, ma quella che non si conosce; non la vita passata, ma la futura. Coll'anno nuovo, il caso incomincerà a trattar bene voi e me e tutti gli altri, e si principierà la vita felice. Non è vero?”
― Leopardi, Operette morali

“Freedom is the dream you dream
While putting thought in chains again --”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Canti

“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.”
― 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

“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

“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.”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“No one thing shows the greatness and power of the human intellect or the loftiness and nobility of man more than his ability to know and to understand fully and feel strongly his own smallness. When, in considering the multiplicity of worlds, he feels himself to be an infinitesimal part of a globe which itself is a negligible part of one of the infinite number of systems that go to make up the world, and in considering this is astonished by his own smallness, and in feeling it deeply and regarding it intently, virtually blends into nothing, and it is as if he loses himself in the immensity of things, and finds himself as though lost in the incomprehensible vastness of existence, with this single act of thought he gives the greatest possible proof of the nobility and immense capability of his own mind, which, enclosed in such a small and negligible being, has nonetheless managed to know and understand things so superior to his own nature, and to embrace and contain this same intensity of existence and things in his thought.”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone di pensieri

“Amami, per Dio. Ho bisogno d'amore, amore, amore, fuoco, entusiasmo, vita”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“Creatures naturally hate their fellow-creatures, and whenever their own interest requires it, harm them. We cannot therefore avoid hatred and injuries from men, while to a great extent we can avoid their scorn. This is why there is usually little point in the respect which young people and those new to the world pay to those they come across, not through mean-mindedness or any other form of self-interest, but through a benevolent desire not to provoke enmity and to win hearts. They do not fulfill this desire, and in some ways they harm their own repute, because the person who is so respected comes to have a greater idea of himself, and he who pays the respect a lesser idea of himself. He who does not look to men for usefulness or fame, should not look for love either, since he will not obtain it. If he wants my opinion, he should preserve his own dignity completely, giving to everyone no more than his due. Thus he will be somewhat more hated and persecuted than otherwise, but not often despised.”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Thoughts

“As soon as the child is born, the mother who has just brought him into the world must console him, quiet his crying, and lighten the burden of the existence she has given him. And one of the principal duties of good parents in the childhood and early youth of their children is to comfort them, to encourage them to live,1 because sorrows and ills and passions are at that age much heavier than they are to those who through long experience, or simply because they have lived longer, are used to suffering. And in truth it is only fitting that the good father and the good mother, in trying to console their children, correct as best they can, and ease, the damage they have done by procreating them. Good God! Why then is man born? And why does he procreate? To console those he has given birth to for having been born?”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone

“To that creature, being born, Its birthday is a day to mourn”
― Giacomo Leopardi

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

“Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle,
e questa siepe, che da tanta parte
dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
silenzi, e profondissima quiete
io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
infinito silenzio a questa voce
vo comparando: e mi sovvien l'eterno,
e le morte stagioni, e la presente
e viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa
immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“In all our actions, including those that appear selfless, we are in search of some kind of pleasure, even if it is only the pleasure of self-esteem. But while our desire for pleasure is infinite, our mental and physical organs are capable only of limited and temporary pleasures; and this mismatch between desire and capacity dooms us to perpetual dissatisfaction. There is no pleasure big or total enough to quench, even momentarily, our thirst for pleasure. But since the absence of pleasure is pain, it follows that we are always in pain, even when we might believe otherwise. And if life is nothing but an unbroken experience of pain, it would be better for every human being never to have been born.”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone

“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

“Being asked for what purpose he thought men were bom, he laughingly replied “ To realise how much better it were not to be born.”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Operette morali

“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, Zibaldone di pensieri

“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

“If you start reading some book, even a very easy one, or listen to the clearest lecture in the world, with excessive attention, and an exaggerated concentration of mind, not only does the easy become difficult for you, not are you amazed and surprised and grieved at an unexpected difficulty, not do you strive harder to understand than you would have with less attention, not only do you understand less, but, if your attention and the fear of not understanding or of not letting something escape is really extreme, you will understand absolutely nothing, as if you hadn't read, and hadn't listened, and as if your were completely intent on another matter. For from to much comes nothing, and to much attention to a thing is the equivalent, in effect, of not paying attention, and of having another, completely different occupation, that is, attention itself. Nor will you be to gain your purpose unless you relax, and slow down your mind, placing it in a natural state, and soothe and put aside your concern to understand, which only in that case will be useful.”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“My thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck seems sweet to me in this sea.”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“Times of trouble demand not tears but counsel.]”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone

“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.”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“غالباً، عندما أحدّق بكَ
وأنت صامتٌ هكذا فوق الصحراء المنبسطة
التى تجاور السماء فى دورانها البعيد
أو عندما أراك مع قطيعى الصغير
تلحقُ بى مسافراً سويّةً
وعندما أرى النجوم تتوهج فى السماء
أقول لذاتى مفكراً:
لم كلّ هذه المشاعل؟
وماذا يفعل الهواء اللامتناهى،
وذاك اللامتناهى العميق الهادىء؟
وتلك الوَحدة العظيمة، ماذا تعنى؟
وأنا ماذا أكون؟”
― 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 The Dream