History of My Life, Vols. I & II Quotes

“Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life; I have never found any occupation more important. Feeling that I was born for the sex opposite mine, I have always loved it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it. I have also been extravagantly fond of good food and irresistibly drawn by anything which could excite curiosity.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“I cannot think without a shudder of contracting any obligation towards death. I hate death; for, happy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses, and those who do not love it are unworthy of it.”
― Giacomo Casanova, The Memoirs of Casanova, Vol 1 of 6: Venetian Years

“It is shallow desires which make a young man bold; strong desires confound him.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“I found that the writer who says SUBLATA LUCERNA NULLUM DISCRIMEN INTER MULIERES ('when the lamp is taken away, all women are alike') says true; but without love, this great business is a vile thing.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“youth runs away from old age, because it is its most cruel enemy”
― Giacomo Casanova, The Memoirs of Casanova, Vol 1 of 6: Venetian Years

“The source of love, as I learned later, is a curiosity which, combined with the inclination which nature is obliged to give us in order to preserve itself. […] Hence women make no mistake in taking such pains over their person and their clothing, for it is only by these that they can arouse a curiosity to read them in those whom nature at their birth declared worthy of something better than blindness. […] As time goes on a man who has loved many women, all of them beautiful, reaches the point of feeling curious about ugly women if they are new to him. He sees a painted woman. The paint is obvious to him, but it does not put him off. His passion, which has become a vice, is ready with the fraudulent title page. ‘It is quite possible,’ he tells himself, ‘that the book is not as bad as all that; indeed, it may have no need of this absurd artifice.’ He decides to scan it, he tries to turn over the pages—but no! the living book objects; it insists on being read properly, and the ‘egnomaniac’ becomes a victim of coquetry, the monstrous persecutor of all men who ply the trade of love.

You, Sir, who are a man of intelligence and have read these least twenty lines, which Apollo drew from my pen, permit me to tell you that if they fail to disillusion you, you are lost—that is, you will be the victim of the fair sex to the last moment of your life. If that prospect pleases you, I congratulate you”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“The theory of behavior is useful to the life of man only as the index is useful to him who goes through it before reading the book itself; when he has read it, all that he has learned is the subject matter. Such is the moral teaching that we receive from the discourses, the precepts, and the stories we are treated to by those who bring us up. We listen to it all attentively; but when we have an opportunity to profit by the various advice we have been given, we become possessed by a desire to see if the thing will turn out to be what we have been told it will; we do it, and we are punished by repentance. What recompenses us a little is that in such moments we consider ourselves wise and hence entitled to teach others. Those whom we teach do exactly as we did, from which it follows that the world always stands still or goes from bad to worse.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“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, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“The longer you remain in Rome,' said [Cardinal] S.C., ‘the smaller you will find it.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“Nequicquam sapit qui sibi non sapit. (He knows nothing who does not profit from what he knows.)”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“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, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“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, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“Worthy or unworthy, my life is my subject, my subject is my life.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“Remembering the pleasures I enjoyed, I renew them, and I laugh at the pains which I have endured and which I no longer feel.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“He knows nothing who does not draw profit from what he knows.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“One phenomenon or another demonstrates our ignorance to us every day.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“My soul profited from the competition
between my afflictions.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“Rhetoric makes use of nature’s secrets only as painters do who try to imitate her. Their most beautiful productions are false”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II

“Remember, Bettina, that you are going to get well; but if you dare scratch yourself; you will be so ugly that no one will ever love you again." I challenge all the physicians in the world to find a more powerful deterrent to itching than this in the case of a girl who knows that she has been beautiful and is in danger of becoming ugly through her own fault if she scratches.”
― Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vols. I & II