Quotes and Images from the Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt   By: Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798)

QUOTES AND IMAGES FROM THE MEMOIRS OF CASANOVA

THE MEMOIRS OF CASANOVA

By Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

A man never argues well except when his purse is well filled

Accepted the compliment for what it was worth

Accomplice of the slanderer

Advantages of a great sorrow is that nothing else seems painful

Age, that cruel and unavoidable disease

All women, dear Leah are for sale

All powerful lever, gold

Alms given in public are sure to be accompanied by vanity

Anger and reason do not belong to the same family

Angry man always thinks himself right

At my age I could not be allowed to have any opinions

Augurs could never look at each other without laughing

Awkward or miserly, and therefore unworthy of love

Axiom that "neglected right is lost right"

Beauty is the only unpardonable offence in your eyes

Beauty without wit offers love nothing

Bed is a capital place to get an appetite

Best plan in this world is to be astonished at nothing

Beware of the man of one book

Calumnies are easy to utter but hard to refute

Cherishing my grief

Clever man deceives by telling the truth

Commissaries of Chastity

Confession

Contempt of life

Could tell a good story without laughing

Criticism only grazed the skin and never wounded deeply

Delights are in proportion to the privations we have suffered

Desire is only kept alive by being denied

Desire to make a great fuss like a great man

Despair which is not without some sweetness

Despised ignoramus becomes an enemy

Diminish the tale of your years instead of increasing it

Distance is relative

Divinities novelty and singularity

Do not mind people believing anything, provided it is not true

Do their duty, and to live in peace and sweet ignorance

Economy in pleasure is not to my taste

Emotion is infectious

Essence of freedom consists in thinking you have it

Everything hung from an if

Exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear

Fanaticism, no matter of what nature, is only the plague

Fatal desire for luxury and empty show spoils all

Favourite passion has always been vengeance

First motive is always self interest

Foolish enough to write the truth

For in the night, you know, all cats are grey

For is love anything else than a kind of curiosity?

Fortune flouts old age

Found him greater at a distance than close at hand

Gave the Cardinal de Rohan the famous necklace

Girl who gave nothing must take nothing

Give yourself up to whatever fate offers to you,

Government ought never to destroy ancient customs abruptly

Groans, and prayers, and blasphemies

Happiness is purely a creature of the imagination

Happiness is not lasting nor is man

Happy or unhappy from a merely cursory inspection

Happy ignorance!

Happy age when one's inexperience is one's sole misfortune

Hasty verses are apt to sacrifice wit to rhyme

He won't be uneasy he is a philosopher

Hobbes: of two evils choose the least

Honest old man will not believe in the existence of rascals

Idle questions which are commonly addressed to a traveller

If this and if that, and every other if

If I could live my life over again

If history did not lie

Ignorance is bliss

Ignorant, who talk about everything right or wrong

Imagine that what they feel themselves others must feel

It is only fools who complain

It's too much for honour and too little for love

Jealousy leads to anger, and anger goes a long way

Knowing that he would not be regretted after his death

Last thing which we learn in all languages is wit

Laugh out of season

Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth

Lie a sufficient number of times, one ends by believing it

Light come, light go

Love always makes men selfish

Look on everything we don't possess as a superfluity