Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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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.
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The man is best served who has no occasion to put the hands of others at the end of his own arms.
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Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.
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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.
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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.
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But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people.
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Days of absence, sad and dreary,Clothed in sorrow's dark array,-Days of absence, I am weary: She I love is far away.
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Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.
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When a man dies he clutches in his hands only that which he has given away during his lifetime.
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Social man lives constantly outside himself.
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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.
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It is to law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ, of the will of all which establishes in civil rights the natural equality between men. It is this celestial voice which dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason, and teaches him to act according to the rules of his own judgment and not to behave inconsistently with himself. It is with this voice alone that political leaders should speak when. they command.
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The man who meditates is a depraved animal.
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In the North the first words are, Help me; in the South, Love me.
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In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
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Le remords s'endort durant un destin prospère et s'aigrit dans l'adversité.
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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.
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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.]
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Childhood has it's own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs.
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Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment.
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By doing good we become good.
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Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
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It is always a poor way of reading the hearts of others to try to conceal our own. [Fr., C'est toujours un mauvais moyen de lire dans le coeur des autres que d'affecter de cacher le sien.]
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I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different.