The collection / 14 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

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 / quote

02Undated

Freedom is the dream you dreamWhile putting thought in chains again --

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

03Undated

The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one's own knowledge is not to overstep them.

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

04Undated

He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present.

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

05Undated

Seated here in contemplations lost, my thought discovers vaster space beyond, supernal silence and unfathomed peace

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

06Undated

He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much the master of the world as he who is ready to die.

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

07Undated

The end of pain we take as happiness.

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

08Undated

You can be happy indeed if you have breathing space from pain.

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

09Undated

I get up and I bless the light thin clouds and the first twittering of birds and the breathing air and smiling face of the hills.

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

10Undated

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

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

11Undated

People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.

Giacomo Leopardi / quote

12Undated

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 / quote

13Undated

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 / quote

14Undated

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 / quote