104 Quotes by Giacomo Leopardi

In all climates, under all skies, man’s happiness is always somewhere else.

But he’s a fool who doesn’t see how swift the wings of youth are, and how near the cradle lies to the grave.

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.

He who has little communication with people is seldom a misanthrope. True misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world. This is because it is practical experience of life, and certainly not philosophy, that makes people hate their fellows.

Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire’s rewards.

To that creature, being born, Its birthday is a day to mourn.

All is mystery except our pain.

Freedom is the dream you dream While putting thought in chains again –.

Modernity, characterized by the diffusion of a written culture, has lost the memory of the oral origins of poetry; this insight is reaffirmed by Leopardi in 1831.