“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)

• Creativity
• Inspiration
• Poetry

“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)

• Desire
• Happiness
• Mind

“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)

• Desire
• Happiness
• Mind