It would be as well for philosophers to get it clearly into their heads that life in itself has no importance whatsoever. What is important is living it well and happily, or at least, or even above all, not living it badly and unhappily. And so they should ascribe usefulness not to those things which simply ensure or preserve life, considered simply as an end in itself, but rather to those which make it worthwhile, that is, really hap[py. But the only thing that makes it truly happy is the false, and every happiness founded on truth is profoundly false, or we could say, every happiness proves to be false and empty when its object is recognized in its reality and truth. (215)

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