Quote

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.

Giacomo Leopardi

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Giacomo Leopardi
Age: 38 †
Born: 1798
Born: June 29
Died: 1837
Died: June 14
Essayist
Literary Critic
Philologist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
Giacomo
conte Leopardi
Cosimo Papareschi
Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi
Giàcomo Leopardi
Become
Enjoyment
Reason
Reasons
Find
Shall
Beneficence
Live
Pleasure
Customary
Men
Age
Ordained
Learn
Vivid
Living
Stolen
Nature
Incapable

More quotes by Giacomo Leopardi

Image
People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
The end of pain we take as happiness.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
We remember childhood as the fabulous years of our lives, and nations remember their childhood as fabulous years.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
Every man remembers his childhood as a kind of mythical age, just as every nation's childhood is its mythical age.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one s own knowledge is not to overstep them.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
Image
Men seldom act from a correct sense of what may be harmful or useful to them.
Giacomo Leopardi