The corruption of customs is deadly for republics, but useful to tyrannies and absolute monarchies. This alone is sufficient to judge of the nature and difference of these two sorts of government (194).

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

The greater the advantage you have over others, the more necessary it is, if you are to avoid being hated, to be amiable, to be unconcerned, almost dismissive of yourself with respect to them, because you need to treat a cause of hatred that you have but they don’t: an absolute cause, which itself makes you hated without your needing to be unjust, arrogant, etc., etc. (147)

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Suffering or despair that arises from great passions or illusions or any misfortunes in life is not comparable to the drowning feeling that results from the certainty and vivid sense of the nothingness of all things, and the impossibility of happiness in this world, and from the immense void you feel in your soul. (114)

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Since everything beautiful and good in this world is pure illusion, and virtue, justice, magnanimity, etc., are all pure fantasies or products of the imagination, the science that seeks to reveal all those truths, that nature has shrouded in such profound mystery, without putting revealed truths in their place, must of necessity conclude that the only choice in this world is to be completely egoistic and always do whatever profits or pleases us most (107).

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Drunkenness is the mother of joy, as is vigor. What does this mean? Why does drunkenness not cause melancholy? First, because melancholy derives from truth, not falsehood, and drunkenness causes us to forget the truth, and only from that forgetfulness can joy be born. Second, men in the state of nature, that is, in a state of vigor much greater than that of the present, were meant to be happy and abandon themselves to illusions and see and feel them as if they were living and bodily presences (98).

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Self-love is very subtle and insinuates itself everywhere, and is found in the innermost places of our hearts, those which seem impervious to this passion (97).

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

There are three ways of looking at things. the first and most blissful is the way of those for whom things also have more spirit than body, by which I mean people of genius and sensibility, for whom there is nothing that does not speak to the imagination or the heart, and who find everywhere material that inspires them to rise above themselves and feel and live, and a continuous relation of things with the infinite and with man, and an indefinable and vague life—those, in other words, who see everything from the point of view of infinity  and in relation to the impulses of their souls (93).

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

All is nothingness in the world, including my despair, which any man who is wise but also calmer, and I myself certainly at a quieter time, will see as vain, irrational, and imaginary. Wretched me! Even this pain of mine is in vain, nothing. After a certain time it will pass and turn to nothing, and leave me in a universal emptiness, a terrible apathy that will not even let me lament (75).

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

The more you think about time, the more you despair of having enough; the more you waste, the more you seem to have left (49).

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.