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

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

— Giacomo Leopardi

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

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

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

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

— Giacomo Leopardi

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

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

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

— Giacomo Leopardi

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