That is why all great men are modest: they consistently measure themselves not in comparison to other people but to the idea of perfection ever present in their minds, an ideal infinitely clearer and greater than any common people have, and they also realize how far they are from fulfilling their ideal.
Giacomo LeopardiThere are some centuries which - apart from everything else - in the art and other disciplines presume to remake everything because they know how to make nothing.
Giacomo LeopardiEvery man remembers his childhood as a kind of mythical age, just as every nation's childhood is its mythical age.
Giacomo LeopardiI may be wrong, but it seems rare in our age to find a widely praised person whose own mouth is not the source of that praise.
Giacomo Leopardi