Giacomo Casanova Quotes

Desires are but pain and torment, and enjoyment is sweet because it delivers us from them.

Learn from me that a wise man who has heard a criminal accusation related with so many absurd particulars ceases to be wise when he makes himself the echo of what he has heard, for if the accusation should turn out to be a calumny, he would himself become the accomplice of the slanderer.

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. Reason is a particle of the Creator's divinity. When we use it with a spirit of humility and justice we are certain to please the Giver of that precious gift.

This extremely interesting girl, after giving me a single glance from her beautiful eyes, stubbornly refused to look at me again. My vanity at once made me think that it was only so that I would be at full liberty to study her impeccable beauty. It was on this girl that I instantly set my sights, as if all Europe were only a seraglio provided for my pleasures.

Even if astrology had been a real science, I knew nothing about it. We find countless events in real history which would never have occurred if they had not been predicted. This is because we are the authors of our so-called destiny, and all the 'antecedent necessities' of the Stoics are chimerical; the argument which proves the power of destiny seems strong only because it is sophistical. Cicero laughed at it. Someone whom he had invited to dinner, who had promised to go, and who had not appeared, wrote to him that since he had not gone it was evident that he had not been iturus ('going to go'). Cicero answers him: Veni ergo cras, et veni etiamsi venturus non sis ('Then come tomorrow, and come even if you are not going to come'). At this date, when I am conscious that I rely entirely on my common sense, I owe this explanation to my reader, despite the axiom, Fata viam inveniunt ('Destiny finds the way'). If the fatalists are obliged by their own philosophy to consider the concatenation of all events necessary, a parte ante ('a priori'), what remains of man's moral freedom is nothing; and in that case he can neither earn merit nor incur guilt. I cannot in conscience admit that I am a machine.

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.

Death is a monster that chases the rapt spectator from the theater before the play he is watching with infinite interest has ended.

economy spoils pleasure

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

lord, if my enemy kills me, I am damned; so save me from death

Beauty without wit offers nothing but the enjoyment of its material charms, whilst witty ugliness captivates by the charms of the mind, and at last fulfils all the desires of the man it has captivated.

I cannot think without a shudder of contracting any obligation towards death. I hate death; for, happy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses, and those who do not love it are unworthy of it.

Rhetoric makes use of nature’s secrets in the same way as painters who try to imitate it: their most beautiful work is false.

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

What do you want to say to me?’
‘Nothing — just to talk about the profession I am entering. I am about to practice virtue in order to find a man who loves it only to destroy it' [replied Mademoiselle Vesian.]
‘That is it exactly; and believe me, everything in this life is much the same. We refer everything to ourselves, and each of us is a tyrant. That is why the best of mortals is he who is tolerant.