21 quotes
Pleasure is always in the past or in the future, never in the present.
Zibaldone (1898)
Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.
Zibaldone (1898)
For whose pleasure and service is this wretched life of the world maintained, by the suffering and death of all the beings which compose it?
It were more reasonable that you [Nature] made happiness a necessity; or this being impossible, it were better not to bring men into the world.
Being asked for what purpose he thought men were born, he laughingly replied: To realize how much better it were not to be born.
Nature has no more esteem
or care for the seed of man
than for the ant
To that creature, being born,
Its birthday is a day to mourn.
No one can truthfully boast or say in anger: I cannot be unhappier than I am.
Zibaldone (1898)
So flees the squirrel from the rattlesnake, and runs in its haste deliberately into the mouth of its tormentor. I am [Nature] that from which thou fleest.
Perhaps in every state beneath the sun,
Or high, or low, in cradle or in stall,
The day of birth is fatal to us all.
Two truths that most men will never believe: one that we know nothing, the other that we are nothing. Add the third, which depends a lot on the second: that there is nothing to hope for after death.
Zibaldone (1898)
Boredom is the most sterile of the human passions. Born of nothingness, it gives life to nothing. Not only is it sterile in itself, it also makes whatever it mingles with, whatever it draws close to, sterile.
And, whereas in sickness we endure new and extraordinary sufferings, as though our ordinary life were not sufficiently unhappy; you [Nature] do not compensate for this by giving us equally exceptional periods of health and strength, and consequent enjoyment.
Not only individual men, but the whole human race was and always will be necessarily unhappy. Not only the human race but the whole animal world. Not only animals but all other beings in their way. Not only individuals, but species, genera, realms, spheres, systems, worlds.
Nature, mother feared and wept for
since the human family was born,
marvel that cannot be praised,
that bears and nurtures only to destroy,
if dying young brings mortals pain,
why let it come down
on these blameless heads?
And if good, then why is it unhappy,
why make this leaving inconsolable,
worse than any other woe,
for those who live, as well as those who go?
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.
I assert that man loves and desires nothing but his own happiness. He therefore loves his life only inasmuch as he esteems it the instrument or subject of his happiness. Hence it is happiness that he always loves, and not life; although he very often attributes to the one the affection he has for the other.
This system, although it clashes with those ideas of ours that the end can be no other than good, is probably more sustainable than that of Leibniz, Pope, etc., that everything is good. I would not dare however to go on to say that the universe which exists is the worst of possible universes, thereby substituting pessimism for optimism. Who can know the limits of possibility?
[S]uch order cannot exist without evil ... Animals destined for the nourishment of other species. The inborn envy and hatred of living beings toward their fellows.
I also naturally come to the conclusion that you are the avowed enemy of men, and all other creatures of your creation. Sometimes alluring, at other times menacing; now attacking, now striking, now pursuing, now destroying; you are always engaged in tormenting us. Either by habit or necessity you are the enemy of your own family, and the executioner of your own flesh and blood.