I've been here for some time now and I decided to introduce myself through some thoughts. I am not a big fan of Casanova, maybe of Kierkegaard, but I am a fan of thought and thinking in general. So when I find some thoughts that are like mine or that I agree with, I like to save them. And here are some...


Giacomo Casanova - Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life):

I leave to others the decision as to the good or evil tendencies of my character, but such as it is it shines upon my countenance, and there it can easily be detected by any physiognomist.

There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.

One who makes no mistakes makes nothing.

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

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion.

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.

Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life; I have never found any occupation more important. Feeling that I was born for the sex opposite mine, I have always loved it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it. I have also been extravagantly fond of good food and irresistibly drawn by anything which could excite curiosity…

Nothing of all that exists has ever exercised so strong power over me as a beautiful female figure.

I have loved women even to madness, but I have always loved liberty better.

Marriage is the tomb of love.

Thence, I suppose, my natural disposition to make fresh acquaintances, and to break with them so readily, although always for a good reason, and never through mere fickleness.

Cheating is a sin, but honest cunning is simply prudence. It is a virtue. To be sure, it has a likeness to roguery, but that cannot be helped. He who has not learned to practice it is a fool.

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Søren Aabye Kierkegaard - Forførerens Dagbog (The Seducer's Diary)

It annoys me to see a male become so confused on such an occasion that out of sheer love he has delirium tremens. What, indeed, do peasants know about cucumber salad! Instead of having the composure to enjoy her disquietude, to let it inflame her beauty and make it incandescent, he brings about only an ungainly confusion, and yet he goes home happy, imagining that it was something glorious.

Mere possession is very little, and the means such lovers use are usually paltry enough; they do not even reject money, power, alien influence, sleeping potions, etc. But what pleasure is there in love if absolute abandon is not intrinsic to it, that is, from the one side—but ordinarily that takes spirit, and such lovers generally do not have that.

But the god of love is blind, and if one is clever, he can surely be fooled. The art is to be as receptive as possible to impressions, to know what impression one is making and what impression one has of each girl. In that way, one can be in love with many girls at the same time, because one is in love in a different way with each one. To love one girl is too little; to love all is superficiality; to know oneself and to love as many as possible, to let one's soul conceal all the powers of love inside itself so that each receives its specific nourishment while the consciousness nevertheless embraces the whole—that is enjoyment, that is living.

Cordelia hates and fears me. What does a young girl fear? Intellect [Aand]. Why? Because intellect constitutes the negation of her entire womanly existence.
Masculine handsomeness, prepossessing nature, etc. are fine resources. One can also make a conquest with them but never win a complete victory. Why? Because one is making war on a girl in her own sphere of power, and in her own sphere of power she is always the stronger. With these resources, one can make a girl blush, drop her eyes, but one can never generate the indescribable, captivating anxiety that makes her beauty interesting.

I, unlike Jehovah, become not more and more visible in the voice, but less and less, for the more I speak the higher I ascend. Then she wants to go along, away on this bold flight of thought.

I am an esthete, an eroticist, who has grasped the nature and the point of love, who believes in love and knows it from the ground up […] All this I know; I also know that the highest enjoyment imaginable is to be loved, loved more than anything else in the world. To poetize oneself into a girl is an art; to poetize oneself out of her is a masterstroke. (!!!)

My dear Cordelia! I am defrauding you of something beautiful, but it cannot be otherwise, and I shall give you all the compensation I can.

Do I love Cordelia? Yes! Sincerely? Yes! Faithfully? Yes—in the esthetic sense, and surely this should mean something. What good would it have been if this girl had fallen into the hands of a clumsy oaf of a faithful husband? What would have become of her? Nothing. They say that it takes a bit more than honesty to make one's way through the world. I would say that it takes a bit more than honesty to love such a girl. That more I do have—it is deceitfulness. And yet I do love her faithfully. Strictly and abstinently, I keep watch on myself so that everything in her, the divinely rich nature in her may come to full development. I am one of the few who can do this, and she is one of the few qualified for it; so are we not suited to each other?

I am a friend of freedom, and I do not care for anything I do not receive freely.

A Don Juan seduces them and abandons them, but he has enjoyment not in abandoning them but rather in seducing them; therefore, it is in no way this abstract cruelty.
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Johnny Depp / Don Juan de Marco, 1994
Every true lover knows that the moment of greatest satisfaction comes when ecstasy is long over, and he beholds before him the flower which has blossomed beneath his touch...

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At elske Een er for lidt; at elske Alle er Overfladiskhed; at kjende sig selv og elske saa mange som muligt [...] det er Nydelse, det er at leve.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard