Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.
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How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
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Le remords s'endort durant un destin prospère et s'aigrit dans l'adversité.
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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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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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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 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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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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The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
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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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Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.
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A feeble body weakens the mind.
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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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Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
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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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Anticipation and Hope are born twins.
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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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Every free action has two causes that come together to produce it. One is moral, the will that determines the act; the other is physical, the power that executes the will to act.
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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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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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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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God made me and broke the mold.
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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.'