# Leopardi's finest prose quotes (Zibaldone and Thoughts)

"Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything", patience as the most heroic virtue and boredom as the pure desire for happiness: the most quoted prose lines of Giacomo Leopardi, from the Zibaldone and the Thoughts.

- 18 votes · 13 items
- Aug 2, 2025 · R. Serra
- https://even.best/en/l/5049/leopardi-s-finest-prose-quotes-zibaldone-and-thoughts

## Top 13

1. **Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Zibaldone, 527 (1821).
2. **Indecision is worse than despair.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Zibaldone, 245 (1820).
3. **I live, therefore I hope, is a perfectly correct syllogism.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Zibaldone, 4145 (1824).
4. **Patience is the most heroic of virtues precisely because it has no appearance of heroism.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Zibaldone, 112 (1820).
5. **The more one loves oneself, the less one can love.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Zibaldone, 1723 (1821).
6. **Italians have no morals: they have customs.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Zibaldone, 2923 (1823).
7. **Men are ashamed not of the injuries they inflict, but of those they receive.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Thoughts (Pensieri), LVII.
8. **Boredom belongs only to those in whom the spirit is something.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Thoughts (Pensieri), LXVII.
9. **I say the world is a league of scoundrels against honest men, of cowards against the generous.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Thoughts (Pensieri), I.
10. **Boredom is the desire for happiness left, so to speak, pure.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Zibaldone, 3715 (1823).
11. **The most effective way to become famous is to make the world believe you already are.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Zibaldone, 4153 (1825).
12. **The most solid pleasure in this life is the vain pleasure of illusions.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Zibaldone, 51.
13. **People are only ridiculous when they want to seem or be what they are not.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Thoughts (Pensieri), XCIX.

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