Giacomo Casanova Quotes

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

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

Alcuni dicono che la vita è solo un insieme di sventure; in altre parole, che la vita è una sventura; ma se la vita è una sventura, la morte deve essere sicuramente il contrario, cioè una fortuna, dato che la morte è l'opposto della vita. Questa conclusione sembrerebbe inevitabile. Ma coloro che parlano così sono sicuramente malati o poveri, fossero in buona salute, avessero la borsa ben fornita, l'allegria in cuore, delle Cecilie, delle Marine e la speranza di altre cose ancor migliori, allora cambierebbero sicuramente parere. Io li considero una razza di pessimisti che si alligna solo tra i filosofi spiantati e i teologhi bricconi e atrabiliari. Se il piacere esiste e lo si può godere solo da vivi, la vita è una fortuna.

The happiest man is the one who knows how to obtain the greatest sum of happiness without ever failing in the discharge of his duties, and the most unhappy is the man who has adopted a profession in which he finds himself constantly under the sad necessity of foreseeing the future.

We avenge intelligence when we deceive a fool.

One who makes no mistakes makes nothing at all.

"Remember, Bettina, that you are going to get well; but if you dare scratch yourself; you will be so ugly that no one will ever love you again." I challenge all the physicians in the world to find a more powerful deterrent to itching than this in the case of a girl who knows that she has been beautiful and is in danger of becoming ugly through her own fault if she scratches.

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.

Economy in pleasure is not to my taste.

I am writing My Life so that I may laugh at myself, and I am succeeding.

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.

Death is a monster which drives an attentive spectator from the great theater before the play in which he is infinitely interested is over. This alone is reason enough to hate it.

Nothing is so catching as the plague; now, fanaticism, no matter of what nature, is only the plague of the human mind.

It is shallow desires which make a young man bold; strong desires confound him.

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. How many changes arise from such an independent mode of life!