Giacomo Leopardi Quotations

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.