Giacomo Casanova: Quotes about life

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
Context: An ancient author tells us somewhere, with the tone of a pedagogue, if you have not done anything worthy of being recorded, at least write something worthy of being read. It is a precept as beautiful as a diamond of the first water cut in England, but it cannot be applied to me, because I have not written either a novel, or the life of an illustrious character. Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life. I have lived without dreaming that I should ever take a fancy to write the history of my life, and, for that very reason, my Memoirs may claim from the reader an interest and a sympathy which they would not have obtained, had I always entertained the design to write them in my old age, and, still more, to publish them.

History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, Preface, p. 35
Referenced

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
Context: 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. How many changes arise from such an independent mode of life!

.
The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), Preface, p. 10
Referenced
Variant: [H]appy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses[. ]

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), Preface, p. 10
Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/casanova/c33m/preface2.html (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.)
Referenced