Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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As for the Soothsayer, although I am certain no one feels the true beauties of that work better than I, I am far from finding these beauties in the same places as the infatuated public does. They are not the products of study and knowledge, but rather are inspired by taste and sensitivity.
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Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart.
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I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.
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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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Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
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It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires.
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The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man's innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.
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Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.
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A paralyzed man who wants to walk OR an agile man who does not want to walk will both remain neutral in nature.
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Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.
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Our island is this earth; and the most striking object we behold is the sun. As soon as we pass beyond our immediate surroundings, one or both of these must meet our eye. Thus the philosophy of most savage races is mainly directed to imaginary divisions of the earth or to the divinity of the sun.
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The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
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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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Universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people.
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In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.
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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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Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing.
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I do not know is a phrase which becomes us.
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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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The French, for example, are a contemptible nation.
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The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.
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A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
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Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.
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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.