Born to acting parents, Casanova was a sickly child and was raised almost entirely by his grandmother. As a young man, he went to Padua to board with a Doctor Gozzi, and fell in love with Gozzi's younger sister, Bettina. After learning his first lessons about women, Casanova set out as an adventurer across Europe, falling in love often along the way. One of his first great loves was Angiola Calori, a supposed castrato whom Casanova unmasked; they planned to marry, but Casanova decided he could not bear the indignity of being the unemployed husband of a woman of the theatre. After he and Angiola broke up, he met the mysterious Henriette in Cesena, who becomes his next great love. However, Henriette reluctantly left him to return to her family, and Casanova journeyed on to France, where he became a Freemason. In his long, wild, and scandalous life, he made the acquaintance of such figures as Frederick the Great of Prussia, Voltaire, the Chevalier d'Eon, Benjamin Franklin, and Catherine the Great of Russia. In 1784, he accepted the offer of Count Josef Karl Emmanuel von Waldstein to work as a librarian at the Count's castle in Dux, where Casanova lived out the rest of his days. According to his friend, the Prince de Ligne, Casanova's last words were: "I have lived as a philosopher, and die as a Christian."
The philosopher is a person who refuses no pleasures which do not produce greater sorrows, and who knows how to create new ones.
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.
Hope is nothing but a deceitful flatterer accepted by reason only because it is often in need of palliatives.
If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.
As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore, I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.
We ourselve are the authors of almost all our woes and griefs, of which we so unreasonably complain.
It is always easy to break one’s word to oneself.
Be the flame, not the moth.
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.
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.
From that moment our love became sad, and sadness is a disease which gives the death-blow to affection.
The man who seeks to educate himself must first read and then travel in order to correct what he has learned.
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,Desires are but pain and torment, and enjoyment is sweet because it delivers us from them.
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).
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.
The sweetest pleasures are those which are hardest to be won.
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.
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.
Happy are those lovers who when their senses require rest can fall back upon the intellectual enjoyments afforded by the mind! Sweet sleep then comes and lasts until the body has recovered its general harmony. On awaking the senses are again active and always ready to resume their action.
‘the smaller you will find it.
In the mean time I worship God, laying every wrong action under an interdict which I endeavour to respect, and I loathe the wicked without doing them any injury.
It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. .
