Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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By doing good we become good.
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Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.
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Behold the works of our philosophers; with all their pompous diction, how mean and contemptible they are by comparison with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man?
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The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.
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We do not know either unalloyed happiness or unmitigated misfortune. Everything in this world is a tangled yarn; we taste nothing in its purity; we do not remain two moments in the same state. Our affections as well as bodies, are in a perpetual flux.
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I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: 'Well, let them eat cake'.
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Childhood is the sleep of reason. [Fr., L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.]
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A feeble body weakens the mind.
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Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.
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Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
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God made me and broke the mold.
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I may be no better, but at least I am different.
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But remain the teacher of the young teachers. Advise and direct us, and we will be ready to learn. I will have need of you as long as I live.
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Girls must be thwarted early in life.
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The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart.
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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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The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
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Christ preaches only servitude and dependence... True Christians are made to be slaves.
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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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Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves.
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Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable.
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All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.
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Our greatest evil flows from ourselves.
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Social man lives constantly outside himself.