Giacomo Casanova Quotes

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

A beautiful woman without a mind of her own leaves her lover with no resource after he had physically enjoyed her charms.

[Matrimony] is the grave of love.

I am of opinion that the only foreboding in which man can have any sort of faith is the one which forbodes evil, because it comes from the mind, while a presentiment of happiness has its origin in the heart, and the heart is a fool worthy of reckoning foolishly upon fickle fortune.

Feeling that I was born for the opposite sex, I have always loved it, and I have done everything I could to make myself beloved by it.

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.

Our contemporary Rousseau has a relevant maxim. He argues that true vengeance consists not of killing the antagonist, but forcing him to kill you. I confess that my own spirit is not sufficiently lofty for me to share this view with the sublime sage of Geneva. Yet the idea is strange and novel, and for those who subscribe to it, there is ample room for subtle and rather heroic argumentation, of the kind so frequently sought by our modern thinkers, who love nothing better than recycling paradoxes into aphorisms and vice-versa.

Happy are those who know how to obtain pleasures without injury to anyone; insane are those who fancy that the Almighty can enjoy the sufferings, the pains, the fasts and abstinences which they offer to Him as a sacrifice,

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.

I have loved women even to madness, but I have always loved liberty better.

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

[<nowiki/>Malipiero's advice to Casanova.] If you wish your audience to cry, you must shed tears yourself, but if you wish to make them laugh you must contrive to look as serious as a judge.

[T]hose who do not love [life] are unworthy of it.

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

La sofferenza è insita nella natura umana; ma non soffriamo mai, o almeno molto di rado, senza nutrire la speranza della guarigione; e la speranza è un piacere. Se talvolta l'uomo soffre senza speranza di guarire, la sicurezza matematica che l'esistenza finirà deve essere un piacere; perchè, nella peggiore delle ipotesi, la morte sarà un sonno pesante, durante il quale saremo consolati da sogni felici, oppure la perdita della conoscenza; ma quando godiamo, la riflessione che il nostro godimento sarà seguito dalla sofferenza non viene mai a turbarci. Il piacere, quindi, mentre ce lo procuriamo, è sempre puro; il dolore è sempre temperato.
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L'uomo saggio, credetemi, non potrà mai essere completamente infelice; sono propenso a credere al mio amico Orazio, il quale afferma che il saggio è sempre felice: nisi quum pituita molesta est. Ma qual è il mortale che ha sempre il catarro?