Giacomo Casanova Quotes - Page 2

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

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

When a man gets it into his head to do something, and when he exclusively occupies himself in that design, he must succeed, whatever the difficulties. That man will become Grand Vizier or Pope.

It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.

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

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.

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

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.

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

If you want to make people laugh, your face must remain serious.

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.

[Matrimony] is the grave of love.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

economy spoils pleasure

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

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.