-
A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
The man who gets the most out of life is not the one who has lived it longest, but the one who has felt life most deeply.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
A blue-stocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one. [Fr., Une femme bel-esprit est le fleau de son mari, de ses enfants, de ses amis, de ses valets, et tout le monde.]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Childhood has it's own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like. v One could wish no easier death than that of Socrates, calmly discussing philosophy with his friends; one could fear nothing worse than that of Jesus, dying in torment, among the insults, the mockery, the curses of the whole nation. In the midst of these terrible sufferings, Jesus prays for his cruel murderers. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and death of Christ are those of a God.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it ... is, for all members of the state ... the rule of what is just or unjust.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Generally we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Social man lives constantly outside himself.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
No one is happy unless he respects himself.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
God is intelligent; but in what manner? Man is intelligent by the act of reasoning, but the supreme intelligence lies under no necessity to reason. He requires neither premise nor consequences; nor even the simple form of a proposition. His knowledge is purely intuitive. He beholds equally what is and what will be. All truths are to Him as one idea, as all places are but one point, and all times one moment.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
I will say little of the importance of a good education; nor will I stop to prove that the current one is bad. Countless others have done so before me, and I do not like to fill a book with things everybody knows. I will note that for the longest time there has been nothing but a cry against the established practice without anyone taking it upon himself to propose a better one. The literature and the learning of our age tend much more to destruction than to edification.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
By doing good we become good.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
In Genoa, the word, libertas can be read on the front of prisons and on the fetters of galley-slaves. The application of this motto is fine and just.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
A feeble body weakens the mind.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-
I may be no better, but at least I am different.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
The man who meditates is a depraved animal.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau