Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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One may live tranquilly in a dungeon; but does life consist in living quietly?
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Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.
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Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.
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It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires.
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Universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people.
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Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
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Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma.
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She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces... But I loved her
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Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.
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We have to have powder for our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.
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Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.
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The French, for example, are a contemptible nation.
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Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity. [Fr., Le remords s'endort durant un destin prospere et s'aigrit dans l'adversite.]
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The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.
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Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.
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There as here, passions are the motive of all action, but they are livelier, more ardent, or merely simpler and purer, thereby assuming a totally different character. All the first movements of nature are good and right.
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Smell is the sense of memory and desire.
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No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
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I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything . It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer.
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In a well governed state, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a state is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a gaurantee of impunity.
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Liberty is not to be found in any form of government; she is in the heart of the free man; he bears her with him everywhere.
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Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.
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Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
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That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.