Top 100 Giacomo Casanova Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The story she had told me was possible, but it was not believable.”

— Giacomo Casanova

52. “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

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

— Giacomo Casanova

54. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

55. “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

56. “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

57. “When you fool a fool you strike a blow for intelligence.”

— Giacomo Casanova

58. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

59. “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

60. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

61. “In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man.”

— Giacomo Casanova

62. “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

63. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

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

— Giacomo Casanova

65. “They are the follies inherent to youth; I make sport of them, and, if you are kind, you will not yourself refuse them a good-natured smile.”

— Giacomo Casanova

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

— Giacomo Casanova

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

— Giacomo Casanova

68. “Whether it is happy or unhappy, a man’s life is the only treasure he can ever possess.”

— Giacomo Casanova

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

— Giacomo Casanova

70. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

71. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

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

— Giacomo Casanova

73. “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

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

— Giacomo Casanova

75. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

76. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

77. “It is always easy to break one’s word to oneself.”

— Giacomo Casanova

78. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

79. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

80. “Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life.”

— Giacomo Casanova

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

— Giacomo Casanova

82. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

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

— Giacomo Casanova

84. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

85. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

86. “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

87. “For my future I have no concern, and as a true philosopher, I never would have any, for I know not what it may be: as a Christian, on the other hand, faith must believe without discussion, and the stronger it is, the more it keeps silent.”

— Giacomo Casanova

88. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

89. “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.”

— Giacomo Casanova

90. “Death is a monster that chases the rapt spectator from the theater before the play he is watching with infinite interest has ended.”

— Giacomo Casanova

91. “It is shallow desires which make a young man bold; strong desires confound him.”

— Giacomo Casanova

92. “Happy are those who know how to obtain pleasures without injury to anyone; insane are those who fancy that the Almighty can enjoy the sufferings, the pains, the fasts and abstinences which they offer to Him as a sacrifice, and that His love is granted only to those who tax themselves so foolishly.”

— Giacomo Casanova

93. “Death is a monster which drives an attentive spectator from the great theater before the play in which he is infinitely interested is over. This alone is reason enough to hate it.”

— Giacomo Casanova

94. “You will laugh when you discover that I often had no scruples about deceiving nitwits and scoundrels and fools when I found it necessary. As for women, this sort of reciprocal deceit cancels itself out, for when love enters in, both parties are usually dupes.”

— Giacomo Casanova

95. “I have never done anything in my life except try to make myself ill when I had my health and try to make myself well when I had lost it. I have been equally and thoroughly successful in both, and today in that particular I enjoy perfect health, which I wish I could ruin again; but age prevents me.”

— Giacomo Casanova

96. “I have not written my memoirs for those young people who can only save themselves from falling by spending their youth in ignorance, but for those whom experience of life has rendered proof against being seduced, whom living in the fire has transformed into salamanders.”

— Giacomo Casanova

97. “Happiness is gained by complying with the duties of whatever condition of life one is in, and you must constrain yourself to rise to that exalted station in which destiny has placed you.”

— Giacomo Casanova

98. “Love becomes imprudent only when it is impatient to enjoy; but when it is a matter of procuring the return of a happiness to which a baleful combination of circumstances has raised impediments, love sees and foresees all that the most subtle perspicacity can discover.”

— Giacomo Casanova

99. “I always feel the greatest bliss when I recollect those I have caught in my snares, for they generally are insolent, and so self-conceited that they challenge wit. 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. In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man.”

— Giacomo Casanova

100. “Rhetoric makes use of nature’s secrets in the same way as painters who try to imitate it: their most beautiful work is false.”

— Giacomo Casanova