Frases de Giacomo Leopardi

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

—  Giacomo Leopardi

„La gentileza de morir comprende.“

—  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

„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

„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

„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

„[T]he recognition of the irredeemable vanity and falsity of all beauty and all greatness is itself a kind of beauty and greatness that fills the soul when it is conveyed by a work of genius. And the spectacle of nothingness is itself a thing in these works, and seems to enlarge the reader’s soul, to raise it up and to make it take satisfaction in itself and its despair.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi, libro Zibaldone

260, 5th October 1820. Translation by Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino et al. [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, ISBN 9780141194400], p. 177
Zibaldone (1898)

„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

Thoughts. Translation by J.G. Nichols [Hesperus Press, 2002, ISBN 9781843910121], p. 6
Aphorisms

„To that creature, being born,
Its birthday is a day to mourn.“

—  Giacomo Leopardi, libro Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia

Stato che sia, dentro covile o cuna,
È funesto a chi nasce il dì natale.
Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia (Night song of a nomadic shepherd in Asia) (1829-1830). Translation by Eamon Grennan, Leopardi: Selected Poems [Princeton University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-691-01644-5], p. 62
Poetry

„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)

„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)