Giacomo Casanova Quotes - Page 3

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.

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.

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.

The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.

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.

I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved in me more dangerous than the excess in too much; the last may cause indigestion, but the first causes death.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

When a sonnet is mediocre it is bad, for it should be sublime.

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.

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.

Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it.

Marriage is the tomb of love.

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.

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

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.

I always made my food congenial to my constitution, and my health was always excellent.

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

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.

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

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.

There is no such thing as a perfectly happy or perfectly unhappy man in the world. One has more happiness in his life and another more unhappiness, and the same circumstance may produce widely different effects on individuals of different temperaments.

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