Giacomo Casanova Quotes

86 Sourced Quotes

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.

Giacomo Casanova
They are the follies inherent to youth; I make sport of them, and, if you are kind, you will not yourself refuse them a good-natured smile.

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it[.

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
When a man is in love very little is enough to throw him into despair and as little to enhance his joy to the utmost.

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
Whatever St. Augustine may say, human creatures would not perform the work of generation if they did not find pleasure in it, and if there was not in that great work an irresistible attraction for them.

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

Giacomo Casanova
My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good.

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

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
Marriage is a sacrament which I detest…Because it is the tomb of love.

Giacomo Casanova
Since, though I do not repent my amorous exploits, I am far from wanting my example to contribute to the corruption of the fair sex, which deserves our homage for so many reasons, I hope that my observations will foster prudence in fathers and mothers and thus at least deserve their esteem.

Giacomo Casanova
Happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure which man possesses.

Giacomo Casanova
Should anyone bring against me an accusation of sensuality he would be wrong, for all the fierceness of my senses never caused me to neglect any of my duties.

Giacomo Casanova
Heart and head are the constituent parts of character; temperament has almost nothing to do with it, and, therefore, character is dependent upon education, and is susceptible of being corrected and improved.

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
Great God, and you witnesses of my death, I have lived as a philosopher, and I die as a Christian.

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

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

Giacomo Casanova
I saw that everything in the world that is famous and beautiful, if we rely on the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it up close.My follies are the follies of youth. You will see that I laugh at them, and if you are kind you will laugh at them with me.

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
You will laugh when you learn that I thought nothing of deceiving idiots, scoundrels and fools when I needed to do so. As for my deceptions of women, these are not of the sort to be tallied, since when love has a hand in things, each party usually dupes the other.

Giacomo Casanova
Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life; I never found any occupation more important. Feeling that I was born for the sex opposite of mine, I have always loved it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it.

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

Giacomo Casanova
I believe in the existence of an immaterial God, the Author and Master of all beings and all things, and I feel that I never had any doubt of His existence, from the fact that I have always relied upon His providence, prayed to Him in my distress, and that He has always granted my prayers. Despair brings death, but prayer does away with despair; and when a man has prayed he feels himself supported by new confidence and endowed with power to act. As to the means employed by the Sovereign Master of human beings to avert impending dangers from those who beseech His assistance, I confess that the knowledge of them is above the intelligence of man, who can but wonder and adore.

Giacomo Casanova
Life is like a beautiful flirt, whom we love and to whom, finally, we grant every condition she imposes as long as she doesn't leave us.

Giacomo Casanova