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Oh providence! Oh nature! Treasure of the poor, resource of the unfortunate. The person who feels, knows your holy laws and trusts them, the person whose heart is at peace and whose body does not suffer, thanks to you is not entirely prey to adversity.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
One can buy anything with money except morality.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Every blue-stocking will remain a spinster as long as there are sensible men on the earth. [Fr., Toute fille lettree restera fille toute sa vie, quand il n'y aura que des hommes senses sur la terre.]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Never did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much as in the journeys I have made alone and on foot. Walking has something about it which animates and enlivens my ideas. I can hardly think while I am still; my body must be in motion to move my mind.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
In all the ills that befall us, we are more concerned by the intention than the result. A tile that falls off a roof may injure us more seriously, but it will not wound us so deeply as a stone thrown deliberately by a malevolent hand. The blow may miss, but the intention always strikes home.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Education is either from nature, from man or from things. The developing of our faculties and organs is the education of nature; that of man is the application we learn to make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we acquire in regard to the different objects by which we are affected. All that we have not at our birth, and that we stand in need of at the years of maturity, is the gift of education.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
The truth brings no man a fortune.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
An honest man nearly always thinks justly.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau