Giacomo Casanova

“Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life; I never found any occupation more important.”

“One who makes no mistakes makes nothing.”

“Be the flame, not the moth.”

“I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms.”

“Love is a great beautifier.”

“Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it, for the persuasion of slavery enslaves him.”

“There is no such thing as a lovers' oath.”

“The sweets of love are washed with tears.”

“Without bread and wine, love is cold.”

“Love is three-quarters curiosity.”

“It is only a woman who can make a man what he is.”

“The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.”

“There is no happiness without liberty, and no liberty without courage.”

“Uncertainty is a pleasure. The master of a secret is the master of all.”

“She had read a good deal, and that made her a little hard to get on with.”

“A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage listeners to public civility.”