Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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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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One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.
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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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Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
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Too much apparatus, designed to guide us in experiments and to supplement the exactness of our senses, makes us neglect to use those senses...The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser and more unskillful are our senses. We surround ourselves with tools and fail to use those which nature has provided every one of us.
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Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
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Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.
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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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The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least.
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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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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 not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.
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We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
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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.
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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.
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Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
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The general will is always right.
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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.
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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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The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
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Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?
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Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
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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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There is a period in life when we go backwards as we advance.