Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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Finance is a slave's word.
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Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.
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Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
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I don't know what is truth,but I can tell you how to find it!
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All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.
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This dog, which, although no beauty, was of an uncommon breed, I had made my friend and companion; and it certainly deserved the name better than the majority of those who had assumed it.
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Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all.
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As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares.
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Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
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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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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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Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.
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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 mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.
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Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
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Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
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For it is in our nature to endure patiently the decrees of fate, but not the ill-will of others.
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Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable.
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At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.
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What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
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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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To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
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The science of government is only a science of combinations, of applications, and of exceptions, according to times, places and circumstances.
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Everything made by man may be destroyed by man; there are no ineffaceable characters except those engraved by nature; and nature makes neither princes nor rich men nor great lords.