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Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require.

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
Almost
Needs
Always
Men
Require
Wicked

More quotes by Giacomo Leopardi

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People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.
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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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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.
Giacomo Leopardi
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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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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
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Freedom is the dream you dream While putting thought in chains again --
Giacomo Leopardi
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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.
Giacomo Leopardi
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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.
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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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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Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.
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.
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.
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.
Giacomo Leopardi
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No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance.
Giacomo Leopardi
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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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Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.
Giacomo Leopardi