"I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel"
About this Quote
The intent is quietly radical for an 18th-century figure marketed to us as pure appetite. He’s not celebrating debauchery so much as refusing metaphysical comfort. No soul talk, no grand moral ledger, no promise that a better version of you continues elsewhere. When feeling stops, the self stops. That bluntness reads like early secular modernity: a life measured by intensity and awareness, not by afterlife or lineage.
Subtext: Casanova is also arguing for his memoirs. If feeling is the proof of existence, then recording feeling is a way to extend presence socially even as he denies literal continuation. The sentence performs that paradox: he rejects immortality while making a bid for it through language.
Context matters. Casanova lived under church power and aristocratic surveillance, where desire could be both currency and crime. Framing sensation as epistemology is a sly counter-authority move: the body, not doctrine, tells the truth. It’s hedonism with a dark edge - less “live fast” than “don’t lie to yourself about the lights going out.”
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Casanova, Giacomo. (2026, January 18). I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-know-that-i-have-lived-because-i-have-felt-and-4552/
Chicago Style
Casanova, Giacomo. "I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-know-that-i-have-lived-because-i-have-felt-and-4552/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-know-that-i-have-lived-because-i-have-felt-and-4552/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.









