Daily Inspiration Quote by Carlo Goldoni

Every abuse of power arrives wearing a costume, and Goldoni is reminding us how easy it is to raid the wardrobe. "Pretexts are not wanting when one wishes to use them" is a razor-clean line about motivated reasoning: the excuse doesn’t need to be true, only available. The grammar is doing quiet work here. "Not wanting" reads like a shrug at abundance; pretexts are everywhere, waiting like props backstage. The deciding factor isn’t evidence, it’s desire.

As a playwright of 18th-century Venice, Goldoni specialized in social theater where status, reputation, and money depended on performance. His comedies broke from stock commedia dell'arte masks toward sharper realism, and this aphorism belongs to that shift: the mask is no longer Harlequin’s; it’s the respectable citizen’s self-justification. The subtext is cynical but practical. People rarely act first and rationalize later by accident; they shop for alibis the way they shop for outfits that fit the occasion.

The line also lands because it refuses moral melodrama. It doesn’t condemn pretexts as uniquely villainous; it implicates a universal social skill. In a world of patronage, arranged marriages, and rigid hierarchies, you often couldn’t say what you meant. So you learned to mean what you could say. Goldoni’s point is that the real drama is internal: the moment "I want" recruits "because". That’s comedy and critique in one, the kind that stings because it’s so plausible.