Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.

— 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

I only see clearly what I remember.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Let's go dance under the elms:Gallants, take up your pipes.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

All that time is lost which might be better employed.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

An honest man nearly always thinks justly.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Days of absence, sad and dreary, She I love is far away.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Let us not forget what befits our present state in the pursuit of vain fancies. Mankind has its place in the sequence of things; childhood has its place in the sequence of human life; the man must be treated as a man and the child as a child. Give each his place, and keep him there. Control human passions according to man's nature; that is all we can do for his welfare. The rest depends on external forces, which are beyond our control.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our island is this earth; and the most striking object we behold is the sun. As soon as we pass beyond our immediate surroundings, one or both of these must meet our eye. Thus the philosophy of most savage races is mainly directed to imaginary divisions of the earth or to the divinity of the sun.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely in breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after having read this work.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: "Well, let them eat cake".

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What I had to say was so clear and I felt it so deeply that I am amazed by the tediousness, repetitiousness, verbiage, and disorder of this writing. What would have mad it lively and vehement coming from another's pen is precisely hat has made it dull and slack coming from mine. The subject was myself, and I no longer found on my own interest that zeal and vigor of courage which can exalt a generous soul only for another person's cause.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There as here, passions are the motive of all action, but they are livelier, more ardent, or merely simpler and purer, thereby assuming a totally different character. All the first movements of nature are good and right.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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.

— 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

As for the Soothsayer, although I am certain no one feels the true beauties of that work better than I, I am far from finding these beauties in the same places as the infatuated public does. They are not the products of study and knowledge, but rather are inspired by taste and sensitivity.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I want you to read the true system of the heart, drafted by a decent man and published under another name. I do not want you to be biased against good and useful books merely because a man unworthy of reading them has the audacity to call himself the Author.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Through the fortunate effect of my frankness, I had the rarest and surest opportunity to know a man well, which is to study him at leisure in his private life and living, so to speak, with himself. For he share himself without reservation and made me feel as much at home in his house as in mine. I had almost no other abode than his own.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is unfortunate for J.J that Rousseau cannot say everything he knows about him.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

J.J. did not always flee from men, but he has always loved solitude. He enjoyed himself with the friends he velieved he had, but he enjoyed himself still more alone. He valued their society, but he sometimes needed to withdraw, and he would perhaps have preferred to live always alone than always with them.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Visions are a feeble resource, you will say, against great adversity! Oh Sir, these visions may possibly have more reality than all those apparent goods about which men make so much ado, for they never bring a true feeling of happiness to the soul, and those who possess them are equally forced to project themselves into the future for want of finding enjoyments that satisfy them, in the present.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

— 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

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

— 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

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A feeble body weakens the mind.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A feeble body weakens the mind.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

— 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

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

God made me and broke the mold.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I only see clearly what I remember.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

— 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

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A feeble body weakens the mind.

— 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

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

God made me and broke the mold.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau