Part’s Reviews > Zibaldone > Status Update

"One can say that fear is the height and purest quintessence of egoism, because it causes man not only to care solely for his own things but also to detach himself from those in order to care only for the pure and bare self, or rather the barest existence of his own individual self separated from any possible existence. "

-Z2207

"Once the idea of absolute perfection, along with innate ideas has been destroyed, and the relative perfection has been substituted for it, we start to give up on the demented ideas of an increment in perfection, of the acquisition of additional good qualities, of a perfection modeled on the false ideas of absolute and of absolutely greater or lesser good and evil."

- Z1619

Could one not ascribe (at any rate in large part) the limited memory of infants and children, which is also evident from the way in which we all tend to forget the first events of our lives, and the more so further back we go, to the lack of language in infants and its imperfection and paucity in children? It's certain that man's memory is utterly powerless (as are thought and intellect) without aid of signs. -Z1103

"Writing must be writing and not algebra; it must represent words with agreed signs.

What is this mishmash of dashes, dots, spaces, double and triple exclamation marks and what have you? I am waiting for see hieroglyphic writing come back into fashion with people no longer wanting to write feelings and ideas but represent them." - Z976

Leopardi foretold the rise of emoticons :D

Rather than extinguish passion with reason, it would be better to turn reason into passion: to make duty, virtue, heroism, etc., become passions.

-Z294.

It is a mistake to talk about desires being satisfied. Desires are not satisfied when we have reached their goal, but extinguished, that is, they are lost or abandoned in the certain knowledge that they can never be satisfied. And all that is gained from reaching the desired goal is to know this wholly.

- Z210

"Now, thanks to witticisms, even the comic has become spiritual, so refined that it is not pure liquor anymore but an ether, a vapor, and this alone is deemed comedy worthy of persons of wit and good taste and good manners, and worthy of refined society and civilized conversation." (Z42)

Try to breathe artificially or carry out consciously one of those many actions that are done naturally -- you will not succeed, or only with difficulty and not so well. In the same way too much art harms us, and what Homer naturally said so well, we are able consciously and with infinite artifice to say only moderately well, and in such a way that effort if almost always more or less apparent. (Z8)

This has been on my TBR and soon actual shelf every since i first learnt about it. Plan to read this through few months.

So, G. Leopardi was an scholar, poet, essayist and philosopher.

That after my rant about frustration with poetry, He comes recommended by N, though :)