Certain quite extraordinary intelligences that nature has from time to time produced as if by some miracle have been either entirely or very nearly useless, precisely on account of the excessive power of either their intellect or their imagination which ended up unable to issue in anything or produce any specific result. (562)

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