[T]he recognition of the irredeemable vanity and falsity of all beauty and all greatness is itself a kind of… — Giacomo Leopardi
[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.
p. 177Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Pleasure is always in the past or in the future, never in the present.
Those innumerable and immense questions about time and space, argued over from the beginnings of metaphysics onward, by metaphysicians of every century, are none other than wars of words, caused by misunderstandings, and imprecision of thought, and limited ability to understand our mind, which is the only place where time and space, like many other abstract things, exist independently and for themselves, and are something.
No one can truthfully boast or say in anger: I cannot be unhappier than I am.
