Remarks by Giacomo Leopardi | V2Melody Quotations

“Once a pleasure is attained, the soul does not cease desiring pleasure, just as it never ceases to think.”

Original: Conseguito un piacere, l’anima non cessa di desiderare il piacere, come non cessa mai di pensare. — Pleasure cannot finally satisfy desire because desire itself is continuous and inseparable from conscious life. · Zibaldone, entry 183, July 1820 (Italian)

“Everything in human beings and in every living creature is self-love.”

Original: Tutto è amor proprio nell’uomo e in qualunque vivente. — A central principle in Leopardi's psychology, treating self-love as a fundamental impulse of living beings. · Zibaldone, entry 508, 15 January 1821 (Italian)

“Enthusiasm and inspiration, essential to poetry, are not lasting things.”

Original: L’entusiasmo l’ispirazione, essenziali alla poesia, non sono cose durevoli. — Leopardi recognises poetic inspiration as an intense but necessarily temporary state. · Zibaldone, entry 4372, September 1828 (Italian)

“Words like "far away" and "ancient" are intensely poetic and pleasing because they awaken vast, indefinite, indeterminate and hazy ideas.”

Original: Le parole lontano, antico e simili sono poeticissime e piacevoli, perché destano idee vaste e indefinite e non determinabili e confuse. — A concise statement of Leopardi's poetics of vagueness, distance and imaginative suggestion. · Zibaldone, entry 1789, 25 September 1821 (Italian)

“Remembrance is essential and fundamental to poetic feeling.”

Original: La rimembranza è essenziale e principale nel sentimento poetico. — Leopardi places remembered distance at the heart of the imaginative transformation that makes experience poetic. · Zibaldone, entry 4426, 14 December 1828 (Italian)

“The poet does not imitate nature; rather, nature speaks within him and through his mouth.”

Original: Il poeta non imita la natura: ben è vero che la natura parla dentro di lui e per la sua bocca. — Poetry is presented not as mechanical imitation but as an instinctive expression of nature working through the poet. · Zibaldone, entry 4372, 10 September 1828 (Italian)

“Selfishness has always been the plague of society; the greater it has been, the worse society's condition has been.”

Original: L’egoismo è sempre stata la peste della società e quanto è stato maggiore, tanto peggiore è stata la condizione della società. — Leopardi identifies excessive self-interest as a force that corrodes the bonds on which social life depends. · Zibaldone, entries 670–671 (Italian)

“Boredom is the desire for happiness left, so to speak, in its pure state.”

Original: La noia è il desiderio della felicità, lasciato, per così dir, puro. — Boredom becomes the uncovered form of desire when neither pleasure nor pain gives the mind another object. · Zibaldone, entry 3715, 17 October 1823 (Italian)

“Children find everything in nothing; adults find nothing in everything.”

Original: I fanciulli trovano il tutto nel nulla, gli uomini il nulla nel tutto. — A celebrated contrast between childhood imagination and the disillusionment that accompanies adult experience. · Zibaldone, entry 527, 19 January 1821 (Italian)

“The best moments of love are those of a quiet, gentle melancholy, when you weep without knowing why.”

Original: I migliori momenti dell’amore sono quelli di una quieta e dolce malinconia, dove tu piangi e non sai di che. — Love reaches its deepest intensity for Leopardi where happiness and inexplicable sadness become inseparable. · Zibaldone, entry 142, 27 June 1820 (Italian)

“Silence is the language of all strong passions: love, even in its tender moments, anger, wonder, fear, and so on.”

Original: Il silenzio è il linguaggio di tutte le forti passioni, dell’amore (anche nei momenti dolci), dell’ira, della maraviglia, del timore ec. — Leopardi suggests that the strongest emotions can overwhelm language rather than find fulfilment in it. · Zibaldone, entry 142, 27 June 1820 (Italian)

“Boredom is, in a way, the most sublime of human feelings.”

Original: La noia è in qualche modo il più sublime dei sentimenti umani. — Leopardi sees profound boredom as evidence that human desire can imagine more than the world can supply. · Pensieri, LXVIII, published posthumously in 1845 (Italian)

“Boredom exists only in those whose spirit has some substance.”

Original: La noia non è se non di quelli in cui lo spirito è qualche cosa. — For Leopardi, profound boredom is not mere idleness but evidence of a mind whose desires exceed ordinary distractions. · Pensieri, LXVII, published posthumously in 1845 (Italian)

“No human quality is more intolerable in ordinary life, nor in fact less tolerated, than intolerance.”

Original: Nessuna qualità umana è più intollerabile nella vita ordinaria, né in fatti tollerata meno, che l’intolleranza. — A neatly paradoxical observation on how readily people condemn the very intolerance they themselves display. · Pensieri, XXXVII, published posthumously in 1845 (Italian)

“Human beings are miserable by necessity, yet determined to believe they are miserable by accident.”

Original: Gli uomini sono miseri per necessità, e risoluti di credersi miseri per accidente. — A compact expression of Leopardi's belief that suffering belongs to the human condition rather than to circumstance alone. · Pensieri, XXXI, published posthumously in 1845 (Italian)

“Nothing shows a lack of philosophy and wisdom more than wanting the whole of life to be wise and philosophical.”

Original: Nessun maggior segno d'essere poco filosofo e poco savio, che volere savia e filosofica tutta la vita. — A witty warning against allowing reflection and seriousness to crowd ordinary life out altogether. · Pensieri, XXVII, published posthumously in 1845 (Italian)

“Death is not an evil, because it frees a person from all evils and, together with life's good things, takes away desires.”

Original: La morte non è un male: perché libera l’uomo da tutti i mali, e insieme coi beni gli toglie i desiderii. — Leopardi's stark philosophical view of death as the ending not only of suffering but also of desire. · Pensieri, VI, published posthumously in 1845 (Italian)

“I say that the world is an alliance of scoundrels against decent people, and of cowards against the generous.”

Original: Dico che il mondo è una lega di birbanti contro gli uomini da bene, e di vili contro i generosi. — A characteristically severe judgement on how self-interest can unite the unscrupulous against the honourable. · Pensieri, I, published posthumously in 1845 (Italian)

“The only remedy for the evils of life is death.”

A stark expression of his philosophical pessimism about the human condition · Zibaldone

“Man is never so unhappy as he seems, nor so happy as he imagines.”

A widely attributed translation from the Zibaldone, though wording varies considerably between editions · Zibaldone, as commonly translated

“Patience is the most heroic of virtues, precisely because it has no appearance of heroism.”

Finding quiet moral strength in endurance rather than spectacle · Zibaldone

Despair
Hope

“The more the world advances in knowledge, the more it advances in unhappiness.”

Expressing his scepticism about the promise of progress to improve human contentment · Zibaldone

“The most beautiful things in the world are those which suggest the most ideas, and books are the most beautiful of all.”

Celebrating literature for the imaginative possibilities it opens beyond the page · Zibaldone

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