Quotes from Giacomo Casanova

I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel.

We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised for a fool is covered with steel and it is often very hard to find his vulnerable part.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy.

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.

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.

I have met with some of them - very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools.

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.

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.

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

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

Praise the beautiful for their intelligence and the intelligent for their beauty.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.