Giacomo Casanova Quotes

86 Sourced Quotes

Thus did God provide me with what I needed for an escape which was to be a wonder if not a miracle. I admit that I am proud of it; but my pride does not come from my having succeeded, for luck had a good deal to do with that; it comes from my having concluded that the thing could be done and having had the courage to undertake it.

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

Giacomo Casanova
From that moment our love became sad, and sadness is a disease which gives the death-blow to affection.

Giacomo Casanova
The man who forgets does not forgive, he only loses the remembrance of the harm inflicted on him; forgiveness is the offspring of a feeling of heroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness, and still oftener of a natural desire for calm and quietness. Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it in his bosom.

Giacomo Casanova
In a woman learning is out of place; it compromises the essential qualities of her sex.... No scientific discoveries have been made by women... [which] requires a vigor which the female sex cannot have. But in simple reasoning and in delicacy of feeling we must yield to women.

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

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
God, great principle of all minor principles, God, who is Himself without a principle, could not conceive Himself, if, in order to do it, He required to know His own principle.

Giacomo Casanova
One of the advantages of a great sorrow is that nothing else seems painful.

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
I loved, I was loved, my health was good, I had a great deal of money, and I spent it, I was happy and I confessed it to myself.

Giacomo Casanova
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!

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

Giacomo Casanova
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.

Giacomo Casanova
The chief business of my life has always been to indulge my senses; I never knew anything of greater importance. I felt myself born for the fair sex, I have ever loved it dearly, and I have been loved by it as often and as much as I could.

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

Giacomo Casanova
The spirit of rebellion is present in every great city, and the great task of wise government is to keep it dormant, for if it wakes it is a torrent which no dam can hold back.

Giacomo Casanova
Happy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses.

Giacomo Casanova
My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it.

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

Giacomo Casanova
We avenge intelligence when we deceive a fool, and the victory is worth the trouble.

Giacomo Casanova
I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence.

Giacomo Casanova
I have written the history of my life, and I have a perfect right to do so; but am I wise in throwing it before a public of which I know nothing but evil? No, I am aware it is sheer folly, but I want to be busy, I want to laugh, and why should I deny myself this gratification?

Giacomo Casanova
If I had married a woman intelligent enough to guide me, to rule me without my feeling that I was ruled, I should have taken good care of my money, I should have had children, and I should not be, as now I am, alone in the world and possessing nothing.

Giacomo Casanova
The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence of memory.

Giacomo Casanova