Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.
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The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never any soul.
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I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different.
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My liveliest delight was in having conquered myself.
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Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
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The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
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Le remords s'endort durant un destin prospère et s'aigrit dans l'adversité.
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A feeble body weakens the mind.
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It is always a poor way of reading the hearts of others to try to conceal our own. [Fr., C'est toujours un mauvais moyen de lire dans le coeur des autres que d'affecter de cacher le sien.]
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Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often contradict each other?
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Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
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Childhood has it's own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs.
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Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.
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The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation.
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Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
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I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.
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Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.
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It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give to both sexes those fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists.
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Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
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We do not know either unalloyed happiness or unmitigated misfortune. Everything in this world is a tangled yarn; we taste nothing in its purity; we do not remain two moments in the same state. Our affections as well as bodies, are in a perpetual flux.
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God made me and broke the mold.
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The strength of the people is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain.
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A blue-stocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one. [Fr., Une femme bel-esprit est le fleau de son mari, de ses enfants, de ses amis, de ses valets, et tout le monde.]
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Anticipation and Hope are born twins.