Giacomo Casanova Quotes

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

Be the flame, not the moth.

one who makes no mistakes makes nothing

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.

Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life; I have never found any occupation more important. Feeling that I was born for the sex opposite mine, I have always loved it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it. I have also been extravagantly fond of good food and irresistibly drawn by anything which could excite curiosity.

The sweetest pleasures are those which are hardest to be won.

By recollecting the pleasures I have had formerly, I renew them, I enjoy them a second time, while I laugh at the remembrance of troubles now past, and which I no longer feel.

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

As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore, I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.

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.

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

Love is three quarters curiosity.

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

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.

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.

I have always had such sincere love for truth, that I have often begun by telling stories for the purpose of getting truth to enter the heads of those who could not appreciate its charms.

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

I often had no scruples about deceiving nitwits and scoundrels and fools when I found it necessary. ...We avenge intelligence when we deceive a fool, and... deceiving a fool is an exploit worthy of an intelligent man. What has infused my very blood with an unconquerable hatred of the whole tribe of fools from the day of my birth is that I become a fool myself when I am in their company.

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

There is no honest woman with an uncorrupted heart whom a man is not sure of conquering by dint of gratitude. It is one of the surest and shortest means.

[Matrimony] is the grave of love.

The pleasure I gave my lovers was a four fifth of the pleasure I experienced.

[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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.

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

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.

I don't conquer, I submit.

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

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.

We love without heeding reason, and cease to love in the same manner.

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

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.

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

I am writing My Life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding.

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

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.

As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other.

I have felt in my very blood, ever since I was born, a most unconquerable hatred towards the whole tribe of fools, and it arises from the fact that I feel myself a blockhead whenever I am in their company.

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.

Marriage is the tomb of love.

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.

Those who do not love life do not deserve it.

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.

I leave to others the decision as to the good or evil tendencies of my character, but such as it is it shines upon my countenance, and there it can easily be detected by any physiognomist.

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.