Laudator Temporis Acti

Iris Origo, Leopardi: A Study in Solitude (Chappaqua: Helen Marx Books, 1999), pp. 120-121, with note on p. 351:

His interest in his own language, which had begun during his philological studies in his boyhood, was perhaps the only passion of his youth that never failed him.

… Il cor di tutte
Cose alfin sente sazietà, del sonno,
Della danza, del canto e dell' amore,
Piacer più cari che il parlar di lingua;
Ma sazietà di lingua il cor non sente.*

Certainly the pages of the Zibaldone bear eloquent witness to the fact that, for Leopardi himself this statement was true! Some men have an addiction to drink, some to drugs, some to one particular human being: Leopardi had an addiction to words.¹²

* 'The heart at last tires of all things: of sleep, dance, song, and even love—pleasures sweeter than the gift of words—but of words themselves, the heart is never tired.' From Leopardi's notes to the Canzoni, Poesie e Prose, vol. I, p. 152.

12. 'The measure of a nation's genius', he affirmed, 'is the richness of its language, and when a language is insufficient to render in translation the subtleties of another, it is a sure sign that it belongs to a less cultivated people.' Zibaldone, I, pp. 730–1, 25 May 1821.

From David Driscoll:

I thought you might be interested to know that today's quotation from Leopardi appears to be a reworking of Iliad 13.636-9, in the 19th century translation by Vincenzo Monti:

… Il cor di tutte
Cose alfin sente sazietà, del sonno,
Della danza, del canto e dell’amore,
Piacer più cari che la guerra; e mai
di guerra non saranno i Teucri?

πάντων μὲν κόρος ἐστὶ καὶ ὕπνου καὶ φιλότητος
μολπῆς τε γλυκερῆς καὶ ἀμύμονος ὀρχηθμοῖο,
τῶν πέρ τις καὶ μᾶλλον ἐέλδεται ἐξ ἔρον εἷναι
ἢ πολέμου· Τρῶες δὲ μάχης ἀκόρητοι ἔασιν.