Since everything beautiful and good in this world is pure illusion, and virtue, justice, magnanimity, etc., are all pure fantasies or products of the imagination, the science that seeks to reveal all those truths, that nature has shrouded in such profound mystery, without putting revealed truths in their place, must of necessity conclude that the only choice in this world is to be completely egoistic and always do whatever profits or pleases us most (107).
Leopardi, Giacomo, and Michael Caesar. Zibaldone