It is plain that a constitution is simply medicine for a sick body. Which medicine would be alien to that body, and yet the latter could not live without it. So the imperfection of the illness has to be compensated for with another imperfection. And thus the constitution is merely a necessary imperfection of the government, an indispensable evil serving to remedy or obstruct a greater evil, much like a cauterization in an individual suffering from rheumatism. (307)

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