Giacomo Casanova Quotes

The man who seeks to educate himself must first read and then travel in order to correct what he has learned.

To lead a blameless life you must curb your passions , and whatever misfortune may befall you cannot be ascribed by anyone to want of good luck, or attributed to fate; these words are devoid of sense, and all fault will rightly fall on your own head.

The same principle that forbids me to lie does not allow me to tell the truth.

My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it.

The thing is to dazzle

Love is a great poet, its resources are inexhaustible, but if the end it has in view is not obtained, it feels weary and remains silent.

The story she had told me was possible, but it was not believable.

Enjoy the present, bid defiance to the future, laugh at all those reasonable beings who exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear, destroying at the same time the pleasure that they might enjoy.

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion.

Real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does, it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy.

In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man.

When you fool a fool you strike a blow for intelligence.

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my memory can evoke it will therefore commence when I had attained the age of eight years and four months.

From that moment our love became sad, and sadness is a disease which gives the death-blow to affection.

In the mean time I worship God, laying every wrong action under an interdict which I endeavour to respect, and I loathe the wicked without doing them any injury.

To Kiss : An attempt to absorb the essence of the other person.

If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.

Cheating is a sin, but honest cunning is simply prudence. It is a virtue. To be sure, it has a likeness to roguery, but that cannot be helped. He who has not learned to practice it is a fool.

There is no such thing as a perfectly happy or perfectly unhappy man in the world. One has more happiness in his life and another more unhappiness, and the same circumstance may produce widely different effects on individuals of different temperaments.

Should I perchance still feel after my death, I would no longer have any doubt, but I would most certainly give the lie to anyone asserting before me that I was dead.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.

Give me a man who is man enough to give himself just to the woman who is worth him. If that woman were me,I would love him alone and forever

The man who forgets does not forgive, he only loses the remembrance; forgiveness is the offspring of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness.

We ourselve are the authors of almost all our woes and griefs, of which we so unreasonably complain.

Happy are those lovers who, when their senses require rest, can fall back upon the intellectual enjoyments afforded by the mind! Sweet sleep then comes, and lasts until the body has recovered its general harmony. On awaking, the senses are again active and always ready to resume their action.

There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.

Thence, I suppose, my natural disposition to make fresh acquaintances, and to break with them so readily, although always for a good reason, and never through mere fickleness.

Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it in his bosom.

Love is only a feeling of curiousity more or less intense, grafted upon the inclination placed in us by nature that the species may be preserved.

If I had married a woman intelligent enough to guide me, to rule me without my feeling that I was ruled, I should have taken good care of my money, I should have had children, and I should not be, as now I am, alone in the world and possessing nothing.

I learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess either of food or abstinence, and I never had any physician except myself.

God ceases to be God only for those who can admit the possibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itself the most severe punishment they can suffer.

The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.

You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.

Man is free; but not unless he believes he is[.]

The raging fire which urged us on was scorching us; it would have burned us had we failed to restrain it.

When a man gets it into his head to do something, and when he exclusively occupies himself in that design, he must succeed, whatever the difficulties. That man will become Grand Vizier or Pope.

I saw that everything famous and beautiful in the world, if we judge by the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it closely.

Praise the beautiful for their intelligence and the intelligent for their beauty.

A man who makes known his love by words is a fool.

economy spoils pleasure

I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms.

I don't conquer, I submit.

Nobody can deprive me of the fact that I had a good time.

I have had friends who have acted kindly towards me, and it has been my good fortune to have it in my power to give them substantial proofs of my gratitude.

Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it; and the greater power he ascribes to faith, the more he deprives himself of that power which God has given to him when He endowed him with the gift of reason.

Hope is nothing but a deceitful flatterer accepted by reason only because it is often in need of palliatives.

The philosopher is a person who refuses no pleasures which do not produce greater sorrows, and who knows how to create new ones.