Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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God made me and broke the mold.
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At first we will only skim the surface of the earth like young starlings, but soon, emboldened by practice and experience, we will spring into the air with the impetuousness of the eagle, diverting ourselves by watching the childish behavior of the little men or awling miserably around on the earth below us.
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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 passions are the voice of the body.
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I bold it impossible, that the great monarchies of Europe can subsist much longer; they all affect magnificence and splendor.
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Every artists wants to be applauded
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Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?
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Your first duty is to be humane. Love childhood. Look with friendly eyes on its games, its pleasures, its amiable dispositions. Which of you does not sometimes look back regretfully on the age when laughter was ever on the lips and the heart free of care? Why steal from the little innocents the enjoyment of a time that passes all too quickly?
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The truths of the Scriptures are so marked and inimitable, that the inventor would be more of a miraculous character than the hero.
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If I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority?
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One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.
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The general will is always right.
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There is a period of life when we go back as we advance. [Fr., Il est un terme de la vie au-dela duquel en retrograde en avancant.]
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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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Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand before the Sovereign Judge, and cry with a loud voice, This is my work, there were my thoughts, and thus was I. I have freely told both the good and the bad, have hid nothing wicked, added nothing good.
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In Genoa, the word, libertas can be read on the front of prisons and on the fetters of galley-slaves. The application of this motto is fine and just.
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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 pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
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Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once.
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Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess
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People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain that an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well-educated man is not so ready to display his learning; he would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace.
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Men speak from knowledge, women from imagination.
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No one is happy unless he respects himself.
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The members of a body-politic call it "the state" when it is passive, "the sovereign" when it is active, and a "power" when they compare it with others of its kind. Collectively they use the title "people," and they refer to one another individually as "citizens" when speaking of their participation in the authority of the sovereign, and as "subjects" when speaking of their subordination to the laws of the state.