Frases de Giacomo Leopardi

„Confía en los que se esfuerzan por ser amados; duda de los que solo procuran parecer amables.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

„Quizá, el camino más directo para conquistar la fama sea el afirmar con seguridad y pertinencia y, por cuantos modos sea posible, el haberla conquistado.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

„Los antepasados son lo más importante para quien no ha hecho nada.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

„No temas ni a la prisión, ni a la pobreza, ni a la muerte. Teme al miedo.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

„Para la felicidad son menos nefastos los males que el aburrimiento.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

„En todos los climas, bajo todos los cielos, la felicidad siempre está en otra parte.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

„La paciencia es las más heroica de las virtudes, precisamente porque carece de toda apariencia de heroísmo.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

„Volvió a mi mente el día que la batalla / de amor sentí por primera vez, y dije: / ¡ay de mí, si esto es amor, como atormenta!“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

De Il primo amore

„La gentileza de morir comprende.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

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

—  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

„Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi, libro Zibaldone

Fuente: Zibaldone di pensieri

„What do you do there, moon, in the sky? Tell me what you do, silent moon. When evening comes you rise and go contemplating wastelands; then you set.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

„Freedom is the dream you dream
While putting thought in chains again“

—  Giacomo Leopardi, Canti

Fuente: Canti

„My philosophy isn’t only not conducive to misanthropy, as it might appear to a superficial reader, and as many have accused me. It essentially rules out misanthropy, it tends toward healing, to dissolving discontent and hatred. Not knee-jerk hatred but the deep-dyed hatred that unreflective people who would deny being misanthropes so cordially bear (habitually or on select occasions) toward their own kind in response to hurts they receive—as we all do, justly or not—from others. My philosophy holds nature guilty of everything, it acquits mankind completely and directs our hate, or at least our lamentations, to its matrix, to the true origin of the afflictions living creatures suffer, etc.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi, libro Zibaldone

2nd January, 1829. Translation by W. S. Di Piero.
Zibaldone (1898)

„ICELANDER: So say all the philosophers. But since that which is destroyed suffers, and that which is born from its destruction also suffers in due course, and finally is in its turn destroyed, would you enlighten me on one point, about which hitherto no philosopher has satisfied me? 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?“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

Essays and Dialogues (1882), Dialogue between Nature and an Icelander

„ICELANDER: Thus I reply to you. I am well aware you did not make the world for the service of men. It were easier to believe that you made it expressly as a place of torment for them. But tell me: why am I here at all? Did I ask to come into the world? Or am I here unnaturally, contrary to your will? If however, you yourself have placed me here, without giving me the power of acceptance or refusal of this gift of life, ought you not as far as possible to try and make me happy, or at least preserve me from the evils and dangers, which render my sojourn a painful one? And what I say of myself, I say of the whole human race, and of every living creature.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi

Essays and Dialogues (1882), Dialogue between Nature and an Icelander

„Pleasure is always in the past or in the future, never in the present.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi, libro Zibaldone

Il piacere è sempre o passato o futuro, non mai presente.
29th September 1823, Festival of Saint Michael the Archangel.
Zibaldone (1898)

„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.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi, libro Zibaldone

1832. Passions. Translation by Tim Parks. [Yale University Press, 2014, ISBN 9780300186338], p. 8
Zibaldone (1898)