Giacomo Casanova

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.

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

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 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 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.

It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.

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.

The longer you remain in Rome,' said [Cardinal] S.C., __he smaller you will find it.

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.

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.

If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.

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.

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

What do you want to say to me?___othing__ust to talk about the profession I am entering. I am about to practice virtue in order to find a man who loves it only to destroy it' [replied Mademoiselle Vesian.]__hat is it exactly; and believe me, everything in this life is much the same. We refer everything to ourselves, and each of us is a tyrant. That is why the best of mortals is he who is tolerant.

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

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.

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).