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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.

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
Trying
Studious
Way
Disadvantages
Shortcomings
Hide
Ridiculous
Exist
Rather
Desire

More quotes by Giacomo Leopardi

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Irresolute men are sometimes very persistent in their undertakings, because if they give up their designs they would have to make a second resolution.
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Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require.
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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.
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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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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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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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Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.
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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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He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die.
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Every man remembers his childhood as a kind of mythical age, just as every nation's childhood is its mythical age.
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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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We remember childhood as the fabulous years of our lives, and nations remember their childhood as fabulous years.
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Men seldom act from a correct sense of what may be harmful or useful to them.
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A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language.
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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.
Giacomo Leopardi
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The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion.
Giacomo Leopardi
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In all climates, under all skies, man's happiness is always somewhere else.
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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.
Giacomo Leopardi
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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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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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