Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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Christ preaches only servitude and dependence... True Christians are made to be slaves.
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The French painter Rousseau was once asked why he put a naked woman on a red sofa in the middle of his jungle pictures. He answered, 'I needed a bit of red there.'
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The man who gets the most out of life is not the one who has lived it longest, but the one who has felt life most deeply.
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Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.
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Equality, because without it there can be no liberty.
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Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be.
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Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
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Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment.
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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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A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.
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The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it ... is, for all members of the state ... the rule of what is just or unjust.
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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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We cannot teach children the danger of telling lies to men without realising, on the man's part, the danger of telling lies to children. A single untruth on the part of the master will destroy the results of his education.
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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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But remain the teacher of the young teachers. Advise and direct us, and we will be ready to learn. I will have need of you as long as I live.
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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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The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.
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I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different.
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How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
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The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
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All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.
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Finance is a slave's word.
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My liveliest delight was in having conquered myself.
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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.]