Man is so fond of praise that, even in relation to things that he thinks are worthless and where he has neither sought nor striven to be praiseworthy, the fact of being praised still gratifies him. Indeed, it will often induce him to try and raise in his own reckoning the worth and reputation of that trifle for which he has been praised, and to persuade himself that it, or the fact of being praiseworthy in relation to it, is by no means trifling in the opinion of others. (361)

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