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Very good and deep is the thought: "Nobody would accept life as a gift if they could decide." Seneca was the one who said it and I am in agreement with him. Imagine a preexistent soul, in all its tranquility, which is informed of what the life of man entails and the evils to which they are subject – it would refuse to enter a body.

— Giacomo Casanova

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Philosophy

More quotes by Giacomo Casanova

You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

Woman is like a book, which, good or bad, must at first please us by the frontispiece.

Whether happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure man possesses[.]

Happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure which man possesses[.]

Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it[.]

All Giacomo Casanova quotes →

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Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
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In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Giacomo Casanova (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.