Best 50 quotes of Giacomo Leopardi on MyQuotes

A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language.

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.

Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.

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.

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

Every man remembers his childhood as a kind of mythical age, just as every nation's childhood is its mythical age.

Freedom is the dream you dream While putting thought in chains again --

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.

If content with himself and mankind, a man is never harsh or curt.

I find it awfully difficult to determine if the habit of talking about oneself at length runs contrary to the basic rules of propriety, or if instead the man exempt from this vice is rare.

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.

Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.

I may be wrong, but it seems rare in our age to find a widely praised person whose own mouth is not the source of that praise.

In all climates, under all skies, man's happiness is always somewhere else.

Irresolute men are sometimes very persistent in their undertakings, because if they give up their designs they would have to make a second resolution.

It's interesting to observe that almost all truly worthy men have simple manners, and that simple manners are almost always taken as a sign of little worth

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.

Man is doomed either squander his youth, which is the only time he has to store provisions for the coming years and provide for his own well-being, or to spend his youth procuring pleasures in advance for that time of life when he will be too old to enjoy them.

Men do not so much hate an evil-doer, or evil itself, as they hate the man who calls evil by its real name.

Nature, with her customary beneficence, has ordained that man shall not learn how to live until the reasons for living are stolen from him, that he shall find no enjoyment until he has become incapable of vivid pleasure.

No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance.

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.

Of men eternally dear! happy indeed If you have breathing-space From pain: blessed all the more If death should heal you of the pain you fear!

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.

People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The artist's conception of his art or the scientist's of his science is usually as great as his conception of his own worth is small.

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 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.

The old man, especially if he is in society in the privacy of his thoughts, though he may protest the opposite, never stops believing that, through some singular exception of the universal rule, he can in some unknown and inexplicable way still make an impression on women.

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.

There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical.

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

The thought that really crushes us is the thought of the futility of life of which death is the visible manifestation.

The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets.

We remember childhood as the fabulous years of our lives, and nations remember their childhood as fabulous years.

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.

A rapidez e a concisão do estilo agradam porque apresentam à alma uma turba de idéias simultâneas, ou cuja sucessão é tão rápida que parecem simultâneas, e fazem a alma ondular numa tal abundância de pensamento, imagens ou sensações espirituais, que ela ou não consegue abraçá-las todas de uma vez nem inteiramente a cada uma, ou não tem tempo de permanecer ociosa e desprovida de sensações. A força do estilo poético, que em grande parte se identifica com a rapidez, não nos deleita senão por esses efeitos, e não consiste senão disso. A excitação das idéias simultâneas pode ser provocada tanto por uma idéia isolada, no sentido próprio ou metafórico, quando por sua colocação na frase, ou pela sua elaboração, bem como pela simples supressão de outras palavras ou frases etc.

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.

Che pensieri soavi, che speranze, che cori, o Silvia mia! Quale allor ci apparia la vita umana e il fato! Quando sovviemmi di cotanta speme, un affetto mi preme acerbo e sconsolato, e tornami a doler di mia sventura. O natura, o natura, perché non rendi poi quel che prometti allor? perché di tanto inganni i figli tuoi?

e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.

Il più certo modo di celare agli altri i confini del proprio sapere, è di non trapassarli.

It is a property of works of genius that, even when they represent vividly the nothingness of things, even when they clearly show and make you feel the inevitable unhappiness of life, even when they express the most terrible despair, nevertheless to a great soul that finds itself in a state of extreme dejection, disenchantment, nothingness, boredom and discouragement about life, or in the most bitter and deathly misfortune, such works always bring consolation, and rekindle enthusiasm, and, though they treat and represent nothing but death, they restore, albeit momentarily, the life that it had lost.

L'uomo è infelice perchè è incontentabile.

So my mind sinks in this immensity: And foundering is sweet in such a sea".