Have just finished Leopardi’s “Pensieri” (translated by P. Maxwell – a scholarly major-general). They are paragraphs on human nature, like Schopenhauer’s psychological observations, Paschals (sic) “Pensées”, (de la) Rochefoucauld’s “Maximes”, etc. How true they all are! I should like  to have a library of such things.

dal Diario, 21 febbraio 1906, Wallace Stevens