Suffering or despair that arises from great passions or illusions or any misfortunes in life is not comparable to the drowning feeling that results from the certainty and vivid sense of the nothingness of all things, and the impossibility of happiness in this world, and from the immense void you feel in your soul. (114)

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.