Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
-
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
-
The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.
-
Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like. v One could wish no easier death than that of Socrates, calmly discussing philosophy with his friends; one could fear nothing worse than that of Jesus, dying in torment, among the insults, the mockery, the curses of the whole nation. In the midst of these terrible sufferings, Jesus prays for his cruel murderers. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and death of Christ are those of a God.
-
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?
-
Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
-
I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.
-
There is a period in life when we go backwards as we advance.
-
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
-
The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.
-
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.
-
Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?
-
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.
-
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.
-
It is believed that physiognomy is only a simple development of the features already marked out by nature. It is my opinion, however, that in addition to this development, the features come insensibly to be formed and assume their shape from the frequent and habitual expression of certain affections of the soul. These affections are marked on the countenance; nothing is more certain than this; and when they turn into habits, they must leave on it durable impressions.
-
Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
-
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.
-
It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.
-
Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.
-
For, as I think I have said, I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.
-
Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
-
The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never any soul.
-
It has always pleased me to read while eating if I have no companion; it gives me the society I lack. I devour alternately a page and a mouthful; it is as though my book were dining with me.
-
We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
-
The passions are the voice of the body.