Giacomo Leopardi Quotes - Page 2

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Men seldom act from a correct sense of what may be harmful or useful to them.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

Men are ready to suffer anything from others or from heaven itself, provided that, when it comes to words, they are untouched.

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

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.

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.

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

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.