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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

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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
Certain
Educated
Give
Otherwise
Giving
Son
Thing
Teaching
Assign
People
Doubt
Acquired
Greater
Sons
Cannot
Educate
Part
Received

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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
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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.
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Men seldom act from a correct sense of what may be harmful or useful to them.
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People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.
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No one is so completely disenchanted with the world, or knows it so thoroughly, or is so utterly disgusted with it, that when it begins to smile upon him he does not become partially reconciled to it.
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Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require.
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Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.
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A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language.
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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.
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We remember childhood as the fabulous years of our lives, and nations remember their childhood as fabulous years.
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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.
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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.
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The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion.
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The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one s own knowledge is not to overstep them.
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Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.
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The end of pain we take as happiness.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The thought that really crushes us is the thought of the futility of life of which death is the visible manifestation.
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