Donald Sutherland credited as playing...
Giacomo Casanova
- Giacomo Casanova: A man who never speaks ill of women does not love them. For to understand them and to love them one must suffer at their hands. Then and only then can you find happiness at the lips of your beloved.
- Giacomo Casanova: It's too late. I've fallen hopelessly in love with you. That unearthly beauty of yours appeals to the artist in me. I would like to mold you like clay in my hands, like the statue I first took you to be. I will be your Pygmalion, giving life to my own creation. With my flame I will ignite your flesh. The bright fire of life would glow within you.
- Giacomo Casanova: I shall be polite.
- Sister Maddalena: I hope not. Since when did two lovers, in the fury of their passion, think about being polite?
- Giacomo Casanova: Never is man plunged so deeply into the abyss, then hurled no less precipitously up towards him who is perfection, as at that translucent instant when the essence of his manhood, joins with and touches the root of the opposite sex.
- Giacomo Casanova: Who is this girl, I asked myself. What is her relationship with this Hungarian who's old enough to be her father? Does she have a husband in Parma? Is she seeking new lovers? Other pleasures?
- Giacomo Casanova: Do you know that you frightened me? You're so pale, I thought that you were Diana, the moon goddess, become mortal.
- Giacomo Casanova: For a beautiful woman, even one soul is more than sufficient, provided that it blends with the man's in perfect harmony with the blending of their bodies.
- Giacomo Casanova: We have far too much power over women, a veritable tyranny, which we... we have been able to exercise only because they are gentler, more reasonable, more human beings than we are. These qualities which should give them superiority over us, have instead, put them at our mercy, for we are 100 times more unreasonable, more cruel, more violent, seemingly born to enslave and oppress.
- Giacomo Casanova: Your lover shall be cuckolded. I shall devote the whole of my knowledge of the science of love to that purpose.
- Giacomo Casanova: Love is a source and root of life. Love gives birth to passions and impulses, be they good or evil. Love gives birth to the eternal flame, be it divine or human. Love gives birth to gods or devils.
- Giacomo Casanova: [to a French woman who is involved with a Hungarian man] How do you talk to your lover?
- Henriette: We don't talk. We don't need to.
- Giacomo Casanova: Priestess of love, let us take off those austere clothes. They're not suitable for this, the happiest of rendezvous.
- Giacomo Casanova: Let us transcend carnal pleasures. Let us strive for the blending of our souls in a deep and perfect union.
- Giacomo Casanova: He who travels to Parma must seek out, and become acquainted with, three wonderful things: salami, prosciutto, and most famous of all, Parmesan cheese.
- Giacomo Casanova: We had been invited to an entertainment at the house of the hunchback, Du Bois, an eccentric nobleman noted for the undefined boundaries of his amorous interests. As undefined, indeed, as the boundaries of the duchy of Parma, which at that time was divided up between the Spanish and the French. That evening, two civilizations, two diametrically opposed visions of life, faced each other across the table.
- Madame D'Urfé: Oh, my dear boy, you can confide in me. I know that you have the famous stone, and the ability to communicate with the spirits of the four elements. Why, you could overthrow the kingdom of France any time you wanted.
- Giacomo Casanova: No. I could never do that. I love France. You must not overestimate me, dear lady.
- Giacomo Casanova: In the delirium of grief, I considered taking my life, or burying myself in a monastery and ending my days as a monk. But that time I chose neither grave nor cloister. Death, beloved friend of noble, unfortunate souls... Many years later in London, I did indeed nearly cross of my own volition the final threshold, but the blame for that morbid temptation lay at the feet of the infamous Charpillon woman, and her equally villainous daughter.
- Giacomo Casanova: What is a kiss? Simply the desire to immerse yourself in the soul of the woman you love.