Quotes from Casanova

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

They [his readers, whom he asks to be his friends] will find that I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of first introducing it into minds which were ignorant of its charms" (Casanova, p.34, Vol 1 Preface).

THE MAN WHO MAKES NO MISTAKES USUALLY MAKES NOTHING

Savoir mal est pire qu'ignorer