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Giacomo Leopardi on Philosophy

1798–1837 Italy

← All quotes by Giacomo Leopardi

11 quotes

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.

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.

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.

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?

I found myself desperately bored with life, with a very strong desire to kill myself, and had an intimation of something bad, which frightened me at the very moment that I wanted to die, and placed me immediately in a state of apprehension and anxiety. I have never felt so strongly the absolute conflict of the elements that form the present human condition, forced to fear for its life and to seek at all costs to preserve it, just then when it was most burdensome, and when it could resolve to be ended by its own will (but by no other cause).

Zibaldone (1898)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Giacomo Leopardi (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.