Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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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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The more humanity owes him, the more society denies him. Every door is shut against him, even when he has a right to its being opened: and if he ever obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than others obtain favors.
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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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The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
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I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
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Smell is the sense of memory and desire.
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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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The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.
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The people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived.
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It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires, and who can doubt that the interest we have in admitting or denying the reality of the Judgement to come determines the faith of most men in accordance with their hopes and fears.
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Let's go dance under the elms:Step lively, young lassies.Let's go dance under the elms:Gallants, take up your pipes.
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It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.
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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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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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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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I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.
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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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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.
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Beings who are so uniquely constituted must necessarily express themselves in other ways than ordinary men. It is impossible that with souls so differently modified, they should not carry over into the expression of their feelings and ideas the stamp of those modifications.
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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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I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
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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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To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.
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Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.