Comments & Greek paintings, Greek artists: He who has the courage to laugh...

Poetry & Greek painting, Greek artists, Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Two Boats, oil on canvas

Giacomo Leopardi

To Himself

Now will you rest forever,
My tired heart. Dead is the last
deception,
That I thought eternal. Dead. Well I
feel
In us the sweet illusions,
Nothing but ash, desire burned out.
Rest forever. You have
Trembled enough. Nothing is worth
Thy beats, nor does the earth
deserve
Thy sighs. Bitter and dull
Is life, there is nought else. The
world is clay.
Rest now. Despair
For the last time. To our kind, Fate
Gives but death. Now despise
Yourself, nature, the sinister
Power that secretly commands our
common ruin,
And the infinite vanity of
everything.

Aphorisms

He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much the master of the world as he who is ready to die.

You can be happy indeed if you have breathing space from pain.

In all climates, under all skies, man's happiness is always somewhere else.

I get up and I bless the light thin clouds and the first twittering of birds, and the breathing air and smiling face of the hills.

It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist.