Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.
-
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.
-
Universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people.
-
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.
-
Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.
-
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.
-
She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces... But I loved her
-
Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man
-
One may live tranquilly in a dungeon; but does life consist in living quietly?
-
We have to have powder for our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.
-
The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.
-
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.
-
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.
-
It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires.
-
I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any one of them. So I chose another guide and said, Let me follow the Inner Light; it will not lead me so far astray as others have done, or if it does it will be my own fault, and I shall not go so far wrong if I follow my own illusions as if I trusted to their deceits.
-
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.]
-
Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.
-
I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.
-
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.
-
That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.
-
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
-
Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.