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The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion.

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
Solid
Illusion
Empty
Pleasure
Life

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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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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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People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.
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The end of pain we take as happiness.
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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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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.
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Freedom is the dream you dream While putting thought in chains again --
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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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A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language.
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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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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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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 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.
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The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one s own knowledge is not to overstep them.
Giacomo Leopardi
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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.
Giacomo Leopardi
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Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require.
Giacomo Leopardi
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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.
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Men seldom act from a correct sense of what may be harmful or useful to them.
Giacomo Leopardi
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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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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