This extreme timidity has its danger, as does excessive confidence. By constantly showing us monsters where there are none, it exhausts us in fighting chimeras [...].
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought.
Do you not know that virtue is a state of war, and that to live in it, one must always fight some battle against oneself?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
If seeking out opportunities is to deserve to succumb to them, fleeing them with too much care is often to refuse great duties.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I have felt the bitterness of remorse; I have tasted the sweetness of victory. After such comparisons, one no longer hesitates in the choice.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
He has given us reason to know what is good, conscience to love it, and freedom to choose it.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
A reasoner may well prove to me that I am not free, but the inner feeling, stronger than all their arguments, constantly denies it.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Everything one asks for properly, one gives to oneself; and [...] one increases one's strength by recognizing one's weakness.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
There is nothing good that does not have a blameworthy excess, even devotion [...].
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Worn-out great passions create a distaste for others; the peace of soul that follows them is the only feeling that grows with enjoyment.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
To change when duty changes is not fickleness, it is constancy. [...] At all times, do what virtue demands, and you will never betray yourself.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
As long as one desires, one can do without being happy; one expects to become so: if happiness does not come, hope is prolonged [...].
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
One enjoys less what one obtains than what one hopes for, and one is only happy before being happy.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The land of chimeras is in this world the only one worth living in, and [...] there is nothing beautiful except that which is not.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
To live without pain is not a human state; to live thus is to be dead.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
My friend, I am too happy; happiness bores me.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I cannot persuade myself that, to be right, one is indispensably obliged to speak last.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Truly corrupt peoples are less those who have bad laws than those who despise the laws.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
It is one of the great disadvantages of the cultivation of letters that, for the few men they enlighten, they corrupt an entire nation to no avail.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Pamphlets turn into volumes, books multiply, and the question is forgotten.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
As for me, I have closed my books; and, after having listened to men speak, I have watched them act.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Do we then think we have become good people because, by dint of giving decent names to our vices, we have learned no longer to blush for them?
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Nature wanted to preserve us from science as a mother snatches a dangerous weapon from the hands of her child.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
With a little work one is sure to make bread, but with much study it is very doubtful that one will succeed in making a reasonable man.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
He who has once accustomed himself to preferring his life to his duty will not be long in preferring to it also the things that make life easy and pleasant.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Science is suitable for a few great geniuses, but [...] it is always harmful to the peoples who cultivate it.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Will one believe one can make them better by persuading them that they are good enough?
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Under the pretext of enlightening minds, must we pervert souls?
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
I was not ignorant, in taking up my pen, that I could not at the same time court men and pay homage to the truth.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Happy are the peoples whose kings have made little noise in history!
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Would such a learned author confuse jurisprudence and laws?
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
I will do neither harm nor favor.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
[...] one must be born either a monarch or a fool.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
Does one ever forget one's happiness?
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
How can one have enough cruelty to see a wretched person in such long and undeserved torment?
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
His law will end the silence of the laws.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
Here you are in a place where the rats gnaw on iron.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
[...] everywhere, the rooster is master of his own dung heap.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
Once, [...] it was a great affair to be made a God; today, it is nothing.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
How can I conceal my sorrow, which spite makes even more bitter?
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
[...] one hand must wash the other.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
This imbecile, who seems incapable of disturbing water, killed men like flies.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
[...] if you grant divinity to such people, who the devil will recognize yours?
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
He is treated as he treated others.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
[...] didn't I tell you that the Saturnalia would not last forever?
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
[...] they preferred to imagine some new torment that [...] would incessantly irritate greed with an illusory hope.
1757-1758
Source: Translation of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
I conceive of two kinds of inequality in the human species: one, natural or physical, [...] the other, moral or political, because it depends on a kind of convention and is established [...] by the consent of men.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
What then is precisely the subject of this Discourse? To mark in the progress of things the moment when, right succeeding violence, nature was subjected to law.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
The philosophers who have examined the foundations of society have all felt the necessity of going back to the state of nature, but none of them has reached it.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
[...] speaking ceaselessly of need, greed, oppression, [...] have transferred to the state of nature ideas they had taken from society: they spoke of savage man, and they depicted civil man.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
The inquiries [...] on this subject must not be taken for historical truths, but only for hypothetical and conditional reasonings, better suited to clarify the nature of things than to show their true origin.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
Dissatisfied with your present state [...], perhaps you would wish to be able to go backwards; and this feeling must be a praise of your first ancestors, a criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror to those who will have the misfortune to live after you.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
The extreme inequality in the manner of living [...] these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we would have avoided nearly all of them by preserving the simple, uniform, and solitary way of life prescribed to us by nature.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
I dare almost affirm that the state of reflection is a state contrary to nature, and that the man who meditates is a depraved animal.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
In becoming sociable and a slave, [man] becomes weak, fearful, and servile; and his soft and effeminate way of life completes the enervation of both his strength and his courage.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
It is [...] not so much the understanding that constitutes the specific distinction of man among the animals, as it is his quality as a free agent.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
[Perfectibility] is the source of all human misfortunes; [...] it is what, by causing his enlightenment and his errors, his vices and his virtues, to bloom over the centuries, makes him in the long run the tyrant of himself and of nature.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
His soul, which nothing agitates, gives itself over to the sole feeling of its present existence, without any idea of the future, however near it may be [...].
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
It is reason that engenders self-love, and it is reflection that strengthens it; it is this that turns man back upon himself [...]. It is philosophy that isolates him.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
Pity is a natural sentiment, which, by moderating in every individual the activity of self-love, contributes to the mutual preservation of the whole species.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
[Pity inspires] this other maxim of natural goodness [...]: Do what is good for you with the least possible harm to others.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
By dint of living with everyone, one no longer has a family; one hardly knows one's parents: one sees them as strangers.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Only the foolish are loud; wise women make no sensation.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Moralizing for both sexes is the death of all good education. Sad lessons are only good for making one hate both those who give them and everything they say.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Woe to the age when women lose their ascendancy and when their judgments no longer matter to men! It is the last degree of depravity.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
There is no true love without enthusiasm, and no enthusiasm without an object of perfection, real or chimerical, but always existing in the imagination.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Everything is but illusion in love, I admit; but what is real are the feelings with which it animates us for the truly beautiful that it makes us love.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
It will always be great and beautiful to reign over oneself, even if it is to obey fantastic opinions.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
One never knows how to command well except what one knows how to execute oneself.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
A witty woman is the scourge of her husband, her children, her friends, her servants, everyone.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Naturally, man hardly thinks. Thinking is an art he learns like all others, and even more difficultly.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
I know [...] only two truly distinct classes: one of people who think, the other of people who do not think; and this difference comes almost solely from education.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Perfect happiness is not on earth, but the greatest of misfortunes, and the one that can always be avoided, is to be unhappy by one's own fault.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
It is up to the spouses to match. Mutual inclination must be their first bond; their eyes, their hearts must be their first guides.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Men say that life is short, and I see that they strive to make it so. [...] No one wants to live today; no one is content with the present hour.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
This supreme happiness is a hundred times sweeter to hope for than to obtain; one enjoys it more when awaiting it than when tasting it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
We shape plants by cultivation, and men by education.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
We are born weak, we need strength; we are born destitute, we need assistance; we are born stupid, we need judgment.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Forced to combat nature or social institutions, one must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Beware of those cosmopolitans who search far and wide in their books for duties they scorn to fulfill around them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Natural man is everything for himself; he is the numerical unit, the absolute whole [...]. Civil man is only a fractional unit that depends on the denominator [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
To be something, to be yourself and always one, you must act as you speak [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
To live is the trade I want to teach him.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
True education consists less in precepts than in exercises.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
It is less a matter of preventing him from dying than of making him live. To live is not to breathe; it is to act.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years, but he who has most felt life.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Civil man is born, lives, and dies in slavery [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
All wickedness comes from weakness; the child is wicked only because he is weak; make him strong, and he will be good.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The only habit a child should be allowed to form is to form none.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Cities are the abyss of the human species.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
I see the fruit of the care I took from his childhood to harden him to the blows of necessity.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The conversation they need requires no witnesses.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
[She] knows that the goods of fortune are always preferred to all else by those who have them. All the rich count gold before merit.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
However perfect the lover sees his mistress, he constantly wants to add new ornaments. [...] he needs to adorn her.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Even deprivations add to their happiness and honor them in their own eyes for their sacrifices.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Reflecting on the folly of our maxims, which always sacrifice true honesty to decency, I understand why language is all the more chaste as hearts are more corrupt.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Each age has its springs that set it in motion; but man is always the same.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
At ten, [man] is led by cakes, at twenty by a mistress, at thirty by pleasures, at forty by ambition, at fifty by avarice: when does he ever run after wisdom?
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
One must be happy [...] it is the first desire nature instilled in us, and the only one that never leaves us.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
There is no happiness without courage, nor virtue without struggle. The word virtue comes from strength; strength is the basis of all virtue.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
All [passions] are good when one remains their master; all are bad when one allows oneself to be subjected to them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Learn to lose what can be taken from you; learn to leave everything when virtue commands it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The abuse of books kills knowledge. Believing one knows what one has read, one feels exempt from learning it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
So many books make us neglect the book of the world [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Woman, honor your leader; it is he who works for you, who earns your bread, who feeds you: this is the man.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
If I suffer, I at least have the consolation of suffering alone, and I would not want a happiness that could cost you yours.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Why then is it a crime to be sensitive to merit, and to love what one must honor?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
[...] what I first took for a passing delirium will be the destiny of my life.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
He who cannot make himself happy can at least deserve to be so [...].
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Is there a more cruel death than to outlive one's honor?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
[...] the first step, which costs the most, was the one that should not have been taken; how could I stop at the others?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
You will be virtuous, or despised; I will be respected, or cured.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I abhor crime even more than I love Julie.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The moment of possession is a crisis of love, and any change is dangerous to ours.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Does one not lose all the time that could be better spent? Ah! If one can live a thousand years in a quarter of an hour, what is the point of sadly counting the days one has lived?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Fate may well separate us, but not disunite us.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I have always believed that the good was only the beautiful put into action, that the one was intimately linked to the other, and that they both had a common source in well-ordered nature.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
True love is a devouring fire that carries its ardor into other feelings, and animates them with a new vigor.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Since when is it vile to receive from the one we love? Since when does what the heart gives dishonor the heart that accepts it?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
It seems that by rising above the abode of men, one leaves behind all base and terrestrial feelings [...] and that the soul contracts something of their unalterable purity.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Rousseau is famous, but he is not known. Our fathers knew him better.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Of all Rousseau's writings, the Social Contract is perhaps the one most talked about and least read.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The Social Contract has therefore not aged; it is our generation that is no longer young and no longer passionate about the great subjects.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Man is born free, of a peaceful nature and a friend to rest; to ensure the peaceful enjoyment of his goods, he formerly renounced his independence by contracting a society.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The act that constitutes the government is not a contract, it is a delegation of legislative power that is always revocable.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The same government is not suitable for all peoples [...] not only can different governments be good for different peoples, but for the same people at different times.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Sovereignty cannot be represented. [...] A people that names deputies would be free only at the moment of the election.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
What is useful to the public is hardly ever introduced except by force, given that private interests [...] are almost always opposed to it.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The right that the social pact gives the sovereign over the subjects does not exceed the bounds of common utility.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
There is a purely civil profession of faith whose articles it is up to the sovereign to fix, not as religious dogma, but as sentiments of sociability.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] one cannot conceive of a Christian republic, one of these two words excluding the other. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[The idea of the Contract] is for him less a philosophical truth, or a law of history, than a weapon capable of destroying the Church and the Monarchy.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Since people have been thinking and writing, all ideas have been expressed and published. By the force of things, all writers [...] are plagiarists without knowing it.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
One does not invent ideas [...] but there is a way of choosing these ideas, of associating them, of expressing them, even, which is a kind of creation.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The buzzing and venomous tribe of critics, that plague of our day, which seems to have found its chosen country in France, attacks everything and everyone, without reason, without measure [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Happiness is a permanent state which does not seem to be made for man here below. Everything on earth is in a continual flux which allows nothing to take on a constant form.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Everything changes around us. We ourselves change, & no one can be sure that they will love tomorrow what they love today.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Let us profit from contentment of mind when it comes, let us be careful not to push it away by our own fault, but let us not make plans to chain it down, for such plans are pure folly.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Happiness has no outward sign [...] but contentment can be read in the eyes, in the posture, in the accent, in the gait, and seems to communicate itself to the one who perceives it.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
If I have made any progress in the knowledge of the human heart, it is the pleasure I took in seeing & observing children that has earned me this knowledge.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
There is compensation for everything. If my pleasures are rare & short, I savor them more vividly when they come than if they were more familiar to me.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
In extreme misery, one finds oneself rich with little. A beggar who finds a coin is more affected by it than a rich man would be by finding a purse of gold.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
So true it is that real pleasure is not measured by expense & that joy is more a friend of pennies than of gold coins.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
I felt [...] the difference there is between wholesome tastes & natural pleasures and those born of opulence, which are little more than pleasures of mockery & exclusive tastes engendered by contempt.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
[My pleasure] consisted less in a feeling of beneficence than in the pleasure of seeing happy faces.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Innocent joy is the only one whose signs flatter my heart.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
I am myself only when I am alone; otherwise, I am the plaything of all those who surround me.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Is it any wonder that I love solitude? I see only animosity on the faces of men, & nature always smiles at me.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
[...] let us allow natural benevolence & courtesy to each do their work without anything venal & mercantile ever daring to approach such a pure source to corrupt or alter it.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Small deprivations are endured without difficulty when the heart is better treated than the body.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Reason should be punished nowhere, nor even reasoning.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If the social order were [...] the work of reason rather than of the passions, [...] we have only prevented private wars to ignite general ones that are a thousand times more terrible.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
By uniting with a few men, we truly become the enemies of the human race.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Everyone sees that every society is formed by common interests, that all division arises from opposing interests [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Ministers need war to make themselves necessary [...] and to destroy the State if necessary, rather than lose their position.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The entire occupation of kings [...] relates to only two objects: to extend their domination abroad, and to make it more absolute within.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[The words] public good, happiness of the subjects, glory of the nation [...] never announce anything but fatal orders, and the people groan in advance when their masters speak to them of their paternal cares.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
What is useful to the public is hardly ever introduced except by force, given that private interests are almost always opposed to it.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
One does not see federative leagues established other than through revolutions [...]. It might perhaps do more harm all at once than it would prevent for centuries.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Almost all small States, whether republics or monarchies, prosper for the sole reason that they are small.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Apply yourselves to extending and perfecting the system of federative governments, the only one that combines the advantages of both large and small States.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
One must study society through men, and men through society; those who wish to treat politics and morals separately will never understand anything of either.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Even domination is servile when it depends on opinion; for you depend on the prejudices of those you govern by prejudices.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
You will always say: We want; and you will always do what others want.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The universal spirit of the laws of all countries is to always favor the strong against the weak, and he who has against he who has nothing.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
In the abyss of evils in which I am submerged, I feel the blows that strike me; I perceive their immediate instrument; but I cannot see the hand that directs them [...].
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
[...] the authors of my ruin have found the inconceivable art of making the public an accomplice in their plot, without it suspecting so itself, and without it perceiving the effect.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The duty of the most sacred friendship [...] is not always to make oneself agreeable, but always to advise for the best.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
In seeking in vain the cause of this unanimous animosity, I was ready to believe that everyone had gone mad.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I knew that base passions seldom subjugate any but weak men, and have little hold on souls of a strong temper [...].
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Since my departure [...], feeling that I would henceforth be a fugitive on earth, I hesitated to allow her to join me and share the wandering life to which I saw myself condemned.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Let us not seek for perfections outside of nature [...].
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Remorse finally became so sharp that it almost tore from me the public confession of my fault [...].
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Oh, how sweet are the tears of tenderness and joy! How my heart drinks them in! Why have I been made to shed so few of them!
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
These lofty geniuses have a language among themselves that vulgar minds will never understand.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Alone, I have never known boredom, even in the most perfect idleness: my imagination, filling all the voids, is enough on its own to occupy me.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
It is only the idle chatter of a room, sitting opposite one another moving nothing but the tongue, that I have never been able to bear.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I have learned to doubt whether a man enjoying a great fortune, whoever he may be, can sincerely love my principles and their author.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
To live always isolated on earth seemed to me a very sad destiny, especially in adversity.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The agitation of the rest of my life has not allowed events the time to arrange themselves in my head. They have been too numerous, too mixed, too unpleasant to be narrated without confusion.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
It seemed to me that one could be caught by surprise at any age...
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
I love with the dreadful certainty of not being able to be loved.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
It is the worst of my torments to see myself as you see me.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
You can draw tears from me, but they are less of love than of rage.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
It is the only desire permitted to one who dares to love without being lovable.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
My first mistake leads to another; but I will know when to stop...
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
You only conceal my madness in order to increase it.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
...your disdain is your only coquetry; you distress me without thinking of me.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
I would be less debased if I had resisted less.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
How many times have I blushed for having been at twenty what I become again at fifty!
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
I felt that I was happy only through my misery.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
Winter may well cover Etna with its ice, its heart is no less ablaze.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
What you have not told me, I know how to tell myself.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
I am proof against everything, except your gaze.
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
It is my fate to burn until my last breath with a fire that nothing can extinguish...
Before January 1765
Source: Letters to Sara
The act which institutes the Government is not a contract but a Law, [...] the depositaries of the executive power are not the masters of the people but its officers, whom it can establish and dismiss whenever it pleases.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is not a question for [the rulers] to contract but to obey, and in taking on the functions the State imposes on them, they are only fulfilling their duty as Citizens.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
One must never touch the established Government except when it becomes incompatible with the public good.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
This circumspection [in not changing government] is a maxim of policy and not a rule of law.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The State is no more bound to leave civil authority in the hands of its leaders than military authority in the hands of its Generals.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
By appearing to use only his rights, it is very easy [for the Prince] to extend them, and to prevent, under the pretext of public tranquility, the assemblies intended to re-establish good order.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[The Prince] takes advantage of a silence he prevents from being broken [...] to assume in his favor the consent of those whom fear keeps silent, and to punish those who dare to speak.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
All the governments of the world, once vested with public force, sooner or later usurp the Sovereign authority.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Periodic assemblies [...] are fit to prevent this misfortune, for then the Prince could not prevent them without openly declaring himself a lawbreaker and an enemy of the State.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Two propositions that can never be suppressed: 1. Does it please the Sovereign to preserve the present form of Government? 2. Does it please the People to leave its administration to those who are currently in charge of it?
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
There is in the State no fundamental law that cannot be revoked, not even the social compact itself.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If all the Citizens were to assemble to break the social compact by mutual agreement, one cannot doubt that it would be very legitimately broken.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It would be absurd for all the Citizens united to be unable to do what each of them can do separately.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Each person can renounce the State of which he is a member, and resume his natural liberty and his property on leaving the country.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To leave [one's country] to evade one's duty [...] the moment the fatherland needs us [...] would be criminal and punishable; it would no longer be retirement, but desertion.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The social treaty has for its end the preservation of the contracting parties.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Whoever wills the end also wills the means, and these means are inseparable from some risks [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Whoever wishes to preserve his life at the expense of others must also give it up for them when necessary.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] his life is no longer merely a gift of nature, but a conditional gift of the State.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Every malefactor who attacks the social right becomes by his crimes a rebel and a traitor to his country [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] when the guilty is put to death, it is less as a Citizen than as an enemy.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] such an enemy is not a moral person, but a man; and it is then that the right of war is to kill the vanquished.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The frequency of punishments is always a sign of weakness or laziness in the Government.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
There is no wicked man who could not be made good for something.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
One has the right to put to death, even for the sake of example, only one who cannot be preserved without danger.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
In a well-governed State there are few punishments, not because many pardons are granted, but because there are few criminals [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The multitude of crimes ensures impunity when the State is in decline.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Frequent pardons announce that crimes will soon need them no longer, and everyone sees where that leads.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Associating with the Encyclopedists, far from shaking my faith, had strengthened it through my natural aversion to disputes and factions.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The study of man and the universe had shown me everywhere the final causes and the intelligence that directed them.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Philosophy, by attaching me to the essence of religion, had detached me from the jumble of petty formulas with which men have obscured it.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
In each country it belonged to the sovereign alone to determine the form of worship [...], and it was therefore the duty of the citizen to follow the worship prescribed by law.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
What could I have done, alone, shy, and a poor speaker, against an arrogant, opulent man, supported by the credit of the great, with brilliant eloquence?
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I listened only to my peaceful nature, my love of rest, which, if it deceived me then, still deceives me today on the same matter.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Such has always been my destiny: as soon as I have brought together two friends whom I had separately, they have never failed to unite against me.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
[...] all these tender reminiscences made me shed tears for my bygone youth and for its raptures, now lost to me forever.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I felt on this occasion that the esteem of men who are themselves worthy produces in the soul a feeling far sweeter and nobler than that of vanity.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
To know me well, one must know me in all my relations, good and bad.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
In the strange, the unique situation in which I find myself, I owe too much to the truth to owe anything more to others.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
My Confessions are not made to be published during my lifetime, nor that of the people concerned.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Since my name must live on, I must endeavor to transmit with it the memory of the unfortunate man who bore it, as he really was, and not as unjust enemies tirelessly work to portray him.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
One who believes himself the master of others is nonetheless a greater slave than they.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Let us then agree that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To take away all liberty from one's will is to take away all morality from one's actions.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
These words, slave and right, are contradictory; they are mutually exclusive.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
There will always be a great difference between subduing a multitude and ruling a society.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body: which means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty [...]; what he gains is civil liberty [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The impulse of appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The fundamental pact substitutes [...] a moral and legitimate equality for whatever physical inequality nature may have established between men [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
There is no wicked man who could not be made good for something. One has the right to put to death, even for the sake of example, only him who cannot be preserved without danger.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The 'know thyself' from the temple of Delphi was not as easy a maxim to follow as I had believed.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
The inextinguishable regrets [...] have inspired in me a horror of lying that should have guaranteed my heart against this vice for the rest of my life.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
By what bizarre inconsistency did I lie so light-heartedly without necessity, without profit, and by what inconceivable contradiction did I not feel the slightest regret for it?
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
The moral instinct has always guided me well; my conscience has kept its original integrity.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
General and abstract truth is the most precious of all goods. Without it, man is blind; it is the eye of reason.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Particular and individual truth is not always a good; it is sometimes a harm, very often an indifferent thing.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Justice itself is in the truth of things; lying is always iniquity, error is always imposture.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
In all difficult moral questions [...], I have always found it best to resolve them by the dictates of my conscience, rather than by the light of my reason.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
To lie for one's own advantage is imposture, to lie for the advantage of another is fraud, to lie to harm is slander; that is the worst kind of lie.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
To lie without profit or prejudice to oneself or others is not to lie: it is not a lie, it is fiction.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Everything that, contrary to truth, injures justice in any way whatsoever, is a lie. That is the exact limit.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
The man I call true [...] is solidly true, even against his own interest, although he cares little about being so in idle conversations.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
If one must be just to others, one must be true to oneself; it is a homage that the honest man owes to his own dignity.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Falsehood never dictated my lies; they all came from weakness, but that is a very poor excuse for me.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
With a weak soul, one can at most guard oneself from vice, but it is arrogant and reckless to dare to profess great virtues.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
A long alteration of sentiments and ideas is needed before one can resolve to take one's equal as a master, and flatter oneself that all will be well.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Political war was also Theological: the domains of the Gods were, so to speak, fixed by the borders of Nations.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Far from men fighting for the Gods, it was, as in Homer, the Gods who fought for men [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[Christianity,] by separating the theological from the political system, caused the State to cease to be one, and brought about the internal divisions that have never ceased to agitate Christian peoples.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] this supposed kingdom of the other world [has become] under a visible leader the most violent despotism in this one.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Anything that breaks social unity is worthless: All institutions that put man in contradiction with himself are worthless.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[Civil religion] is bad in that, being founded on error and lies, it deceives men, makes them credulous and superstitious, and drowns the true worship of the divinity in a vain ceremonial.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Far from attaching the hearts of Citizens to the State, [Christianity] detaches them from it as from all earthly things: I know of nothing more contrary to the social spirit.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
We are told that a people of true Christians would form the most perfect society [...]. I say [...] that a society of true Christians would no longer be a society of men.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
By dint of being perfect, [a society of true Christians] would lack cohesion; its destructive vice would lie in its very perfection.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The Christian's homeland is not of this world. He does his duty, it is true, but with a profound indifference to the success or failure of his efforts.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
What does it matter whether one is free or a serf in this valley of miseries? The essential thing is to get to paradise, and resignation is but one more means to that end.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian Republic; each of these two words excludes the other. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Subjects owe the Sovereign an account of their opinions only insofar as those opinions are of importance to the community.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Whoever dares to say, 'Outside the Church there is no Salvation,' ought to be driven from the State, unless the State is the Church, and the Prince the Pontiff.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
In large cities, depravity begins with life, and in small ones, it begins with reason.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Only the foolish are loud; wise women make no sensation.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Moralizing [...] is the death of all good education. Sad lessons only serve to make one hate both those who give them and all that they say.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
There is no true love without enthusiasm, and no enthusiasm without an object of real or chimerical perfection [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
All is but illusion in love, I admit; but what is real are the feelings with which it animates us for the true beauty it makes us love.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Woe to the age when women lose their ascendancy, and when their judgments no longer matter to men! It is the final degree of depravity.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
It will always be great and beautiful to reign over oneself, even if it is to obey fantastic opinions.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
One never knows how to command well except for what one knows how to execute oneself.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Perfect happiness is not on this earth; but the greatest of misfortunes [...] is to be unhappy by one's own fault.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Do you want to [...] make happy marriages? Smother prejudices, forget human institutions, and consult Nature.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Thinking is an art that one learns like all the others, and with even more difficulty.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
A witty woman is the scourge of her husband, her children, her friends, her servants, of everyone.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Men say that life is short, and I see that they strive to make it so.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
No one wants to live today; no one is content with the present hour, all find it passes too slowly.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
When you only want to arrive, you can rush in a post-chaise; but when you want to travel, you must go on foot.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
He who, without stopping at appearances, judges the happiness of men only by the state of their hearts, will see their miseries even in their successes.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The unfortunate man wanted to rule the world, and did not know how to rule his own house!
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The play of all human passions offers [...] lessons to whoever wants to study history to know oneself and become wise at the expense of the dead.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
He who begins to make himself a stranger to himself will not be long in forgetting himself completely.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
No one does evil for the sake of evil.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
We would forgive their vices more easily if we could know how much their own heart punishes them for them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The advantages are apparent, the pain is internal.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Self-love is a useful but dangerous instrument; it often wounds the hand that uses it, and rarely does good without evil.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Great men are not mistaken about their superiority [...]. The more they have, the more they know all that they lack.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
There is no madness from which a man who is not mad cannot be cured, except for vanity.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Put all the lessons of young people into actions rather than words; let them learn nothing from books that experience can teach them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Doubt about things that are important for us to know is a state too violent for the human mind [...] it prefers to be mistaken than to believe nothing.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The faith of children and of many men is a matter of geography.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
To prevent pity from degenerating into weakness, one must [...] generalize it and extend it to all of humankind.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
It is by doing good that one becomes good; I know of no surer practice.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
This is not about [...] those metaphysical subtleties that have pervaded all parts of literature [...]; but it is about one of those truths that concern the happiness of the human race.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
I foresee that I will not easily be forgiven for the side I have dared to take.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
By directly confronting all that men admire today, I can expect nothing but universal blame.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
It is not because I have been honored with the approval of a few wise men that I should count on that of the public.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
My mind is [...] made up; I do not care to please either the wits or the fashionable people.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
In all ages, there will be men made to be subjugated by the opinions of their century, their country, and their society.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
The one who today plays the freethinker and the philosopher would, for the same reason, have been but a fanatic in the time of the League.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
One should not write for such readers when one wants to live beyond one's own century.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
In what truly matters to the subject, I am sure to be exact and faithful.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
As soon as security left me more at ease, the dominant feeling took its place again.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Nothing flattered me, nothing tempted me, I had no desire but to return to maman's side.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The tenderness and truth of my attachment [...] had uprooted from my heart all imaginary projects, all the follies of ambition.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I no longer saw any other happiness than that of living near her, and I did not take a step without feeling that I was moving away from that happiness.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
My return was so swift and my mind so distracted that [...] I do not have the slightest memory of that one.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Never was a man less curious than I about his friends' secrets.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
My heart, solely occupied with the present, fills its entire capacity, its entire space.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
[...] apart from past pleasures, which are now my only enjoyments, there is not an empty corner left for what is no more.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The multitude of great affairs means that one is not so unpleasantly watched.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it is impossible for it not to have some civil effect [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] as soon as [theological intolerance] has [a civil effect], the Sovereign is no longer Sovereign, even in temporal matters.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
From that moment, Priests are the true masters; Kings are but their officers.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
We must tolerate all [religions] that tolerate others, as long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of the Citizen.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Whoever dares to say, 'Outside the Church there is no Salvation,' must be driven from the State.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Such a dogma is good only in a Theocratic Government; in any other, it is pernicious.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[With] people one believes to be damned; to love them would be to hate God who punishes them.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is absolutely necessary that they be brought back or tormented.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
After having laid down the true principles of political right and tried to establish the State on its foundations, it would remain to support it through its external relations.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
But all this forms a new object too vast for my short sight; I should have kept it ever closer to me.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is better to never taste happiness than to taste it and lose it.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
A moment of error has changed everything.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Indiscreet consolations only embitter violent afflictions. [...] sadness and silence are then the true language of friendship.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Sublime reason is sustained only by the same vigor of the soul that creates great passions [...].
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Let rank be regulated by merit, and the union of hearts by their choice, that is the true social order.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Love has insinuated itself too deeply into the substance of your soul [...]. You will never erase its profound impression without at the same time erasing all the exquisite feelings you received from nature.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
My weak heart has now only the choice of its faults.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
One can resist everything, except benevolence; and there is no surer way to win the affection of others than to give them one's own.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
[...] does the soul have a sex? In truth, I hardly feel one in my own.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
How can one quarrel when one is in love, and waste in tormenting each other those moments when one is in such great need of consolation?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I am only alone when in a crowd.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
No one ever says what he thinks, but what it suits him to make others think; [...] the apparent zeal for truth is never but the mask of self-interest.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The source of happiness lies neither in the desired object nor in the heart that possesses it, but in the relationship between the two.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Great passions rarely sprout in weak men.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I enter with a secret horror into this vast desert of the world.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The public is nowadays so ill-disposed towards anything called novelty [...] that it is hardly possible to offer it anything [...] without exposing oneself to [...] being condemned without a hearing.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
To have only reason on one's side is not to fight on equal terms; prejudice is almost always certain to triumph over it [...].
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
[The public] would rather complain eternally of being poorly served than take the trouble to be served better.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
People cry out about the [...] difficulty of the art, and they reject those who propose to clarify and shorten it.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
The fear of becoming students again [...] always makes them regard with contempt or dread anything new one might propose in their field.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
It is easier to inherit a master's science than his genius.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
To destroy an established system, the one intended to replace it must be preferable, not only on its own merits, but also by overcoming all the reasons of seniority and all the prejudices that strengthen the former.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
[Experts] [...] consider things far less for what they are in themselves than for the bearing they may have on their interests.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
It is much more important to know if a [project] is advantageous than to know its author well.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
[Art] has had the fate of arts that are perfected only successively. The inventors [...] only thought of the state in which it was in their time, without foreseeing that to which it might later attain.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
It is not possible for a system, even if it were the best in the world in its origin, not to become burdened in the end with encumbrances and difficulties through the changes made to it [...].
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
One need only reflect upon this art, not as an [expert], but as a philosopher, to soon sense its flaws.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
In matters of institution, and in general matters, 'less good' is never a small defect.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
The perfection of signs [...] consists essentially in expressing much in a small space.
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
The only grace I have the right to [...] ask [...] is that you judge it only after having read my work [...].
1743
Source: Dissertation on Modern Music
Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and since force produces no right, conventions remain as the basis of all legitimate authority among men.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
What do they gain, if this very tranquility is one of their miseries? One lives tranquilly in dungeons too; is that enough to feel well in them?
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To say that a man gives himself gratuitously is to say an absurd and inconceivable thing; such an act is illegitimate and null, for the sole reason that he who does it is not in his right mind.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen: madness creates no right.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Even if each man could alienate himself, he cannot alienate his children; they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To renounce one's liberty is to renounce one's quality as a man, the rights of humanity, and even one's duties.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Such a renunciation is incompatible with the nature of man; and to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his actions.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is a vain and contradictory convention to stipulate, on the one hand, absolute authority, and on the other, unlimited obedience.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
War, then, is not a relation between man and man, but a relation between State and State, in which individuals are enemies only accidentally [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Each State can have for enemies only other States and not men, seeing that between things of diverse natures no real relation can be fixed.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The purpose of war being the destruction of the enemy State, one has the right to kill its defenders only so long as they are bearing arms; but as soon as they lay them down and surrender [...] they become simply men again, and one no longer has any right to their life.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If war does not give the victor the right to massacre the vanquished peoples, this right he does not have cannot found the right to enslave them.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is therefore an iniquitous exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life, over which one has no right.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The right of slavery is null, not only because it is illegitimate, but because it is absurd and meaningless.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
These words, slave, and, right, are contradictory; they are mutually exclusive.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Oh my genius, where are you? My talent, what have you become? All my fire has been extinguished, my imagination has frozen; the marble comes out cold from my hands.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
Praise & glory no longer lift my soul; [...] even friendship has lost its charms for me.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
I have lost the taste I had for admiring them: the company of Artists & Philosophers has become insipid to me.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
I have lost my genius... so young still! I have outlived my talent.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
What then is this internal ardor that devours me? [...] in the languor of an extinguished genius, does one feel [...] this insurmountable restlessness, this secret agitation that torments me?
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
When my extinguished mind no longer produces anything great, beautiful, or worthy of me, I will show my Galatea, and I will say: this is my work.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
I cannot tire of admiring my work; I am drunk on self-love; I adore myself in what I have made.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
Ah! it is its perfection that is its flaw... [...] less perfect, you would lack nothing.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
The veil of illusion falls, and I dare not look into my heart: I would have too much to be ashamed of.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
My only madness is to discern beauty, my only crime is to be sensitive to it. There is nothing in that of which I should be ashamed.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
Alas! it remains motionless & cold, while my heart, set ablaze by its charms, would wish to leave my body to go and warm its own.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
Ah! let me always be another, to always want to be her, to see her, to love her, to be loved by her...
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
Order is disturbed, nature is outraged; restore its laws to their empire, re-establish its benevolent course & pour out your divine influence equally.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
However unhappy mortals may be, when they have invoked the Gods, they are more tranquil.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
Yes, dear and charming object; yes, worthy masterpiece of my hands, of my heart, and of the Gods: it is you, it is you alone: I have given you my whole being; I will no longer live but through you.
1762
Source: Pygmalion (Rousseau)
[Certain] pieces contain admirable and even sublime things.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
[The author] would have announced that this response was to be the last he would make to his critics.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
he found himself obliged to take up his pen once more.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
For him, it was the first and the last.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
One should not understand by [...] a title [...], but the last response on the subject in question.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
the careful editor should have informed us of the reason for leaving the word 'last', from the moment this supposed last is followed by another response.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
this epithet must be removed from the title, [...] because it was so in an edition made during the author's lifetime.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all other rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on conventions.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If there are [...] slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves, their cowardice has perpetuated them.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To find a form of association [...] by which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body: which means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty [...]; what he gains is civil liberty [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] the social compact establishes such an equality among the citizens that they all bind themselves under the same conditions and should all enjoy the same rights.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
I therefore call a Republic any State governed by laws [...]: for then only does the public interest govern, and the public matter has substance.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The greatest good of all, which should be the end of every system of legislation, is reduced to these two main objects, liberty and equality.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The lack of grace is a flaw that women do not forgive, even in merit...
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Oh my good friend! Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
A perfect woman and a perfect man should no more resemble each other in soul than in face.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Can the eyes of love, as piercing as they are, see flaws? That care belongs to honest friendship...
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Oh! How lovely are the illusions of love! Its flatteries are, in a sense, truths; judgment is silent, but the heart speaks...
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
A melody that does not speak always sings poorly, and harmony alone has never known how to say anything to the heart.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Oh, the sweet and charming security that comes from the feeling of a perfect union!
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
It is not a matter of extinguishing a love that must last as long as my life, but of making it innocent or dying guilty.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
It seems to me that true love is the most chaste of all bonds.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The heart does not follow the senses, it guides them; it covers their wanderings with a delicious veil.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
True love, always modest, does not snatch its favors with audacity; it steals them with timidity.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
What is there to do now with a tasteless youth whose delights we have exhausted?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
A man's honor [...] is not in the power of another; it is within himself and not in the opinion of the people.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
He who pretends to face death without fear is lying. Every man fears dying; it is the great law of sentient beings...
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
True courage [...] does not consist in fighting, but in fearing nothing.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
This passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is then only that the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses [...], man [...] finds himself forced to act on other principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
His faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted...
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If the abuses of this new condition did not often degrade him to a condition lower than the one he left, he would have to bless continuously the happy moment that took him from it forever.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[The civil state] made of a stupid and dull-witted animal, an intelligent being and a man.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
What he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
We must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the general will.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[We must distinguish] possession, which is merely the effect of force [...], from property, which can be founded only on a positive title.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
We might [...] add to what man acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
When an exact proportion cannot be established between the parts of the State, [...] a special magistracy is instituted which [...] puts every term back into its true relationship.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[An institution] is the preserver of the laws and of the legislative power.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[An institution] serves [...] to protect the Sovereign against the Government, [...] to uphold the Government against the People, [...] and to maintain the balance on all sides.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[An institution] should have no portion of the legislative or executive power, but its own power is for that very reason the greater: for, while it can do nothing, it can prevent everything.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[The defender of the Laws] is more sacred and more revered [...] than the Prince who executes them and the Sovereign who gives them.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
A wisely tempered [institution] is the staunchest pillar of a good constitution; but if it has but a little too much power, it overthrows everything.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[A power] degenerates into tyranny when it usurps the executive power, of which it is only the moderator, and wants to dispense the laws it should only protect.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Crime and punishment [...] alike hasten the ruin of the Republic.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Excessive power [...] gradually usurped, ultimately served, with the help of laws made for liberty, as a safeguard for those who destroyed it.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
A tribunal [...] which, far from openly protecting the laws, serves only, after their debasement, to strike in the shadows blows that one dares not perceive.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[A political body] is weakened, like the Government, by the multiplication of its members.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The best way to prevent the usurpations of a [...] political body would be not to make it permanent, but to regulate the intervals during which it would remain suppressed.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
A newly re-established magistrate does not start with the power his predecessor had, but with that which the law gives him.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
In the current state of things, a man abandoned to himself among others from birth would be the most disfigured of all.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
We shape plants by cultivation, and men by education.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
We are born weak, we need strength [...]. All that we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown, is given to us by education.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Forced to combat nature or social institutions, one must choose between making a man or a citizen: for one cannot make both at the same time.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Beware of those cosmopolitans who go searching in their books for duties they disdain to fulfill around them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
To be something, to be oneself and always one, one must act as one speaks; one must always be decided on the course to take, take it firmly, and always follow it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
To live is the trade I want to teach him. [...] he will be, first and foremost, a man: all that a man must be, he will know how to be when needed.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Our true study is that of the human condition. He among us who best knows how to bear the good and evil of this life is, in my opinion, the best educated.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
It is less about preventing him from dying than about making him live. To live is not to breathe, it is to act [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years, but he who has most felt life.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
All our wisdom consists of servile prejudices; all our customs are but subjugation, confinement, and restraint. Civilized man is born, lives, and dies in slavery.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
All wickedness comes from weakness; [...] make him strong, and he will be good: he who could do everything would never do harm.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The only habit a child should be allowed to form is to contract none [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
We do not know what our nature permits us to be; none of us has measured the distance that can exist between one man and another.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The general will alone can direct the forces of the State according to the purpose of its institution, which is the common good.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If the opposition of particular interests made the establishment of societies necessary, it is the agreement of these same interests that made it possible.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is what is common in these different interests that forms the social bond, and if there were not some point in which all interests agree, no society could exist.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is solely on the basis of this common interest that society must be governed.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Sovereignty, being nothing but the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The sovereign, which is only a collective being, can only be represented by itself.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Power can indeed be transmitted, but not the will.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The particular will by its nature tends towards preferences, and the general will towards equality.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is not in the power of any will to consent to anything contrary to the good of the being who wills.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If the people simply promise to obey, they dissolve themselves by this act, they lose their quality as a people.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The moment there is a master, there is no longer a Sovereign, and from that moment the body politic is destroyed.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
From universal silence, one must presume the consent of the people.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If it is pleasant, I will have the regret of enjoying myself without you.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
By trying to be perfect, you will become good for nothing, and you will have to seek friends among the angels.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Friendship is lavish, but love is miserly.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
If one is not master of one's feelings, at least one is master of one's conduct.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I find his image more dangerous than his person.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Weak and unhappy that we are! It is we who make our own evils.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
What can one regret in the world when one still has a friend?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The true book of nature for me is the human heart [...].
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
To abstain in order to enjoy, that is [...] the epicureanism of reason.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
One stifles great passions; rarely does one purify them.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
If life is short for pleasure, how long it is for virtue!
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
There are eternal impressions that neither time nor care can erase. The wound heals, but the scar remains.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Inconstancy and love are incompatible: the lover who changes does not change; he begins or ceases to love.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
A great unhappy passion is a great means to wisdom.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Are not the good and the bad things in [marriage] shared [...] and the sorrows that we give to each other, do they not always fall back on the one who causes them?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Since all Citizens are equal by the social contract, what all must do, all can prescribe [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] no one has the right to demand that another do what he does not do himself.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The supreme authority can no more be modified than it can be alienated; to limit it is to destroy it.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is absurd and contradictory for the Sovereign to give itself a superior.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
There is only one contract in the State, and that is the one of association; and it alone excludes all others.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
One cannot imagine any public Contract that would not be a violation of the first.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If it were possible for the Sovereign [...] to possess executive power, right and fact would be so confounded that it would no longer be known what is law and what is not.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[The] body politic thus denatured would soon fall prey to the violence against which it was instituted.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
A contract of the people with such or such persons would be a particular act. From which it follows that this contract [...] would be illegitimate.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[The] contracting parties would be between themselves under the sole law of nature and without any guarantee of their reciprocal commitments, which is in every way repugnant to the civil state.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
He who has the force in his hands is always the master of the execution [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[...] it would be like calling a contract the act of a man who says to another: 'I give you all my goods, on condition that you give me back what you please'.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
I hold it as an incontestable maxim that whoever has seen only one people, instead of knowing men, knows only the people with whom he has lived.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
To learn, it is not enough to run through countries; one must know how to travel. To observe, one must have eyes and turn them toward the object one wishes to know.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
There are many people whom travels instruct even less than books, because they are ignorant of the art of thinking [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Travel pushes one's nature along its incline, and completes the making of a man, good or bad.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The original characters of peoples, fading day by day, become for the same reason more difficult to grasp.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
There is a great difference between traveling to see the country and traveling to see peoples. [...] It should be quite the opposite for one who wishes to philosophize.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
One must know what ought to be in order to judge well what is.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Political right is yet to be born, and it is to be presumed that it will never be born.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The more the State expands, the more liberty diminishes.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The social contract is [...] the basis of all civil society, and it is in the nature of this act that one must seek the nature of the society it forms.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The more I examine the work of men in their institutions, the more I see that by dint of wanting to be independent, they make themselves slaves, and that they exhaust their very liberty in vain efforts to secure it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Liberty is not in any form of government, it is in the heart of the free man; he carries it with him everywhere.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Oh Emile! Where is the good man who owes nothing to his country? Whoever he may be, he owes it what is most precious to man, the morality of his actions and the love of virtue.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
All capitals are alike, all peoples mingle in them, all customs are jumbled together; it is not there that one should go to study nations.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The golden age is treated as a chimera, and it will always be one for anyone with a spoiled heart and taste. It is not even true that we regret it [...]. What would it take to make it reborn? Only one thing [...] to love it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Falsehood never dictated my lies, they all came from weakness [...]. With a weak soul one can at most protect oneself from vice, but it is arrogant and reckless to dare to profess great virtues.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
It is never too late to learn, even from one's enemies, to be wise, true, modest, and to presume less of oneself.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Thus the substance of the weak is always used for the profit of the powerful.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
The precious 'farniente' was the first and foremost of those pleasures that I wanted to savor in all its sweetness, and everything I did [...] was in effect only the delicious and necessary occupation of a man who has devoted himself to idleness.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Everything is in a continual flux on earth: nothing keeps a constant and fixed form, and our affections, which are attached to external things, necessarily pass and change like them.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
There is scarcely a moment in our most vivid enjoyments when the heart can truly tell us: I wish this moment could last forever.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
If there is a state where the soul finds a solid enough base to rest its whole self [...], where the present lasts forever without marking its duration [...] and that this feeling alone [of our existence] can fill it; as long as this state lasts, he who finds himself in it can be called happy.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
What does one enjoy in such a situation? Nothing external to oneself, nothing but oneself and one's own existence; as long as this state lasts, one is self-sufficient, like God.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
The feeling of existence, stripped of all other affections, is in itself a precious feeling of contentment and peace.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
I have seen that to do good with pleasure, I had to act freely, without constraint, and that to take away all the sweetness of a good deed, it was enough for it to become a duty for me.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
There is no [virtue] in following one's inclinations [...]. But it consists in conquering them when duty commands, to do what it prescribes.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Whether it be men, duty, or even necessity that commands, when my heart is silent, my will remains deaf, and I cannot obey.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
I have never believed that human freedom consists in doing what one wants, but rather in never doing what one does not want.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
As long as I act freely I am good and do only good; but as soon as I feel the yoke, whether of necessity or of men, I become rebellious or rather restive, then I am nothing.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
It is to this return to ourselves that adversity forces us, and perhaps that is what makes it most unbearable for most men.
1776-1778
Source: Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Life is short, not so much because of the short time it lasts, but because in that short time, we have almost no time to savor it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
We are born, so to speak, twice: once to exist, and the other to live [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Our passions are the main instruments of our preservation; it is therefore an undertaking as vain as it is ridiculous to want to destroy them [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The source of our passions [...] is self-love: a primitive, innate passion, prior to all others, and of which all others are, in a sense, only modifications.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Self-love [...] is content when our true needs are satisfied; but vanity (amour-propre), which compares itself, is never content and cannot be.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
What makes a man essentially good is to have few needs and to compare himself little with others; what makes him essentially wicked is to have many needs and to hold much to opinion.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The proper study of man is that of his relationships.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
They made Love blind because he has better eyes than we do, and sees relationships that we cannot perceive.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
From the midst of so many diverse passions, I see opinion raise an unshakable throne, and foolish mortals [...] base their own existence only on the judgments of others.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Whoever blushes is already guilty: true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
It is man's weakness that makes him sociable; it is our common miseries that bring our hearts to humanity.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
A truly happy being is a solitary being [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Pity is sweet, because in putting ourselves in the place of the one who suffers, we still feel the pleasure of not suffering as they do.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
One must study society through men, and men through society: those who wish to treat politics and morality separately will never understand anything of either.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The man of the world is entirely in his mask. [...] What he is is nothing, what he appears to be is everything to him.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
I find my censors a bit severe on my logic; and I suspect they would have been less scrupulous if I had been of their opinion.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
False knowledge [...] is worse than ignorance.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
[The author] prefers rusticity to the proud and false politeness of our age [...].
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
I have assigned this first degree of the decline of morals to the first moment of the cultivation of letters in all the countries of the world.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
One could hardly show an author a greater mark of contempt than by replying to him only with the same arguments he has refuted.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
What will become of virtue when one must get rich at any price?
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
The Academy had asked me if the restoration of the sciences and arts had contributed to purifying morals. [...] now I am being blamed for not having solved another [question].
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
When a man is dead, one should not call a doctor.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
One cannot shed too much light on truths that so frontally clash with the general taste.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
I believe we must leave knucklebones to the children.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
I cannot bring myself to answer a work before having read it, nor to consider myself beaten before having been attacked.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
I foresee that, when it is a question of defending myself, I will follow without scruple all the consequences of my principles.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
I know in advance with what grand words I will be attacked: enlightenment, knowledge, laws, morality, reason, decency, regards, gentleness, amenity, politeness, education, etc.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
To all that I will answer with only two other words, which ring even louder in my ear: Virtue! Truth!
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
If anyone sees only words in that, I have nothing more to say to him.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
People have always argued a great deal about the best form of government, without considering that each of them is the best in certain cases, and the worst in others.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
In general, democratic government suits small states, aristocratic government suits medium-sized ones, and monarchy suits large ones.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is not good that he who makes the laws should execute them.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests in public affairs.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
A people that would never misuse the government would not misuse independence either; a people that would always govern well would not need to be governed.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Taking the term in its strict sense, a true democracy has never existed, and never will. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If there were a people of gods, they would govern themselves democratically. So perfect a government is not for men.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[Luxury] corrupts both the rich and the poor, the one by possession, the other by covetousness; it sells the country to softness and vanity [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium. [I prefer dangerous liberty to quiet servitude.]
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is the best and most natural order for the wisest to govern the multitude, when one is sure that they will govern for its profit, and not for their own.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Machiavelli's The Prince is the book of republicans.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The best kings want to be able to be wicked if they please, without ceasing to be the masters.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
[The interest of princes] is firstly that the people be weak, miserable, and that they may never be able to resist them.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is easier to conquer than to rule.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Rest and liberty seem to me incompatible; one must choose.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
He who, without stopping at appearances, judges the happiness of men only by the state of their hearts, will see their miseries even in their successes; he will see their desires and their gnawing worries extend and grow with their fortune.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
If it happens even once that he would rather be another than himself, were that other Socrates or Cato, all is lost; he who begins to become a stranger to himself will not be long in forgetting himself completely.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
It is not the Philosophers who know men best; they see them only through the prejudices of philosophy [...]. A savage judges us more soundly than a Philosopher does.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
It is our passions that irritate us against those of others; it is our interest that makes us hate the wicked; if they did us no harm, we would have more pity than hatred for them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
What then would be required to observe men well? A great interest in knowing them, a great impartiality in judging them; a heart sensitive enough to conceive all human passions, and calm enough not to experience them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Great men are not mistaken about their superiority; they see it, they feel it, and are no less modest for it. The more they have, the more they know all that they lack.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
There is no madness from which a man who is not mad cannot be cured, except for vanity; for this, nothing corrects it but experience, if indeed anything can correct it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
By what bizarre turn of mind are we taught so many useless things, while the art of acting is counted for nothing? They claim to form us for society, yet they instruct us as if each of us were to spend our lives thinking alone in our cell.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
It is by doing good that one becomes good; I know of no surer practice.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Put all the lessons of young people into actions rather than words. Let them learn nothing from books that experience can teach them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The talent of teaching is to make the disciple enjoy the instruction. Now, for him to enjoy it, his mind must not remain so passive [...] that he has absolutely nothing to do to understand you.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Let us extend self-love to other beings, and we will transform it into virtue [...]. The more one generalizes this interest, the more equitable it becomes, and the love of mankind is nothing other in us than the love of justice.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
To prevent pity from degenerating into weakness, it must therefore be generalized and extended to all of humankind. Then one yields to it only insofar as it is in accord with justice.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The faith of children and of many men is a matter of geography. Will they be rewarded for being born in Rome rather than in Mecca?
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
How can one be a skeptic by system and in good faith? [...] Doubt about things that are important for us to know is a state too violent for the human mind; [...] it prefers to be mistaken than to believe nothing.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
To say if a book is good or bad, what does it matter how it was made?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Who dares to assign precise limits to nature, and say: This is how far man can go, and no further?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Oh, philosophy! How much trouble you take to shrink hearts, to make men small!
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
You require common men and rare events: I believe I would prefer the opposite.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
In large societies, one only learns to hate men.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Passion, full of itself, expresses itself with more abundance than force: it does not even think of persuading; it does not suspect that it can be doubted.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
A letter truly dictated by love [...] will be slack, diffuse, full of lengths, of disorder, of repetitions.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
This is how the heart knows how to speak to the heart.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Love is but an illusion; it creates, so to speak, another universe.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The feeling fades in the end; but the sensitive soul always remains.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
[Their] errors are worth more than the knowledge of the wise.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
By wanting to be what one is not, one comes to believe one is something other than what one is, and that is how one goes mad.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Sublime authors, lower your models a little, if you want people to try to imitate them.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
He who prefers truth to his glory may hope to prefer it to life.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
It is not because we are weak, but because we are cowards, that our senses always subjugate us. Whoever fears death less than crime is never forced to be a criminal.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Instead of destroying natural equality, the fundamental pact, on the contrary, substitutes a moral and legitimate equality [...] and that, while they may be unequal in strength or genius, they all become equal by convention and by right.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The general will alone can direct the forces of the State according to the purpose of its institution, which is the common good.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is what is common in these different interests that forms the social bond, and if there were not some point in which all interests agree, society could not exist.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Private interest always tends towards preferences, and public interest towards equality.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The general will that must direct the State is not that of a past time, but that of the present moment.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
There are a thousand ways to gather men, there is only one way to unite them.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
I seek right and reason, and do not dispute facts.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To take away all freedom from one's will is to take away all morality from one's actions.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Abuses are inevitable [...] in any society where the public interest and the laws [...] are constantly attacked by the personal interest and passions of the leader and the members.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Why is the general will always right [...]? If not because there is no one who does not secretly appropriate this word 'each,' and who does not think of himself when voting for all?
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The social pact establishes among the citizens such an equality of right that they all engage themselves under the same conditions and must all enjoy the same benefits.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
By what inconceivable art could one have found the means to subjugate men in order to make them free?
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is to the law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ of the will of all, which re-establishes in right the natural equality between men.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
For a nascent people to be able to feel the great maxims of justice [...] the effect would have to become the cause, the social spirit [...] would have to preside over the institution itself, and men would have to be before the laws what they are to become by them.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The greatest good of all, which must be the basis of every system of legislation, [...] is reduced to these two principal objects, liberty and equality.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
May I, by fighting him with his own principles, vanquish him with his own weapons, and make him triumph through his own defeat!
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
The sciences serve to make known the true, the good, the useful of all kinds: a precious knowledge which, by enlightening minds, must naturally contribute to purifying morals.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Will morals be less pure because reason is more enlightened? [...] will our path become less easy to find and more difficult to keep?
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
It is only with the help of reflection and study that we can manage to [...] subject the body to the empire of the mind, to lead the soul [...] to the knowledge of its duties and its end.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
The more they [the sciences] are cultivated in a state, the more the state flourishes; everything would languish without them.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Every citizen, of whatever profession or condition, has duties to fulfill; and how can one fulfill them without knowing them?
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
The more he knows, the more he feels he has more knowledge to acquire, and the more knowledge he has acquired, the more facility he has to do good.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
But is ignorance of vice then a virtue? Is doing good the same as being ignorant of evil?
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
If the sciences make us know evil, they also make us know its remedy.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Where has one ever seen men without flaws, without desires, without passions? Do we not carry within ourselves the seed of all vices?
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
No, it is not from the sciences, it is from the bosom of wealth that softness and luxury have always been born; and [...] wealth has not been the ordinary lot of scholars.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
Hypocrisy, as odious as it is in itself, is nonetheless a tribute that vice pays to virtue.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
One can be polite without being deceitful; one can certainly be both without being very learned; and more commonly still, one can be very learned without being very polite.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
In our days we see wars that are less frequent, but more just; actions less astonishing, but more heroic; victories less bloody, but more glorious [...].
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
It was the abuse of the sciences, not the sciences themselves, that [Socrates] condemned [...]. But the abuse of a thing presupposes the good use that can be made of it.
1750
Source: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts
If one does not thoroughly know the nation for which one works, the work one does for it, however excellent it may be in itself, will always be flawed in its application.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
I see all the States of Europe rushing to their ruin. Monarchies, Republics, [...] all these beautiful, so wisely balanced Governments, fallen into decrepitude, threaten an impending death.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
Correct, if you can, the abuses of your constitution; but do not despise the one that has made you what you are.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
Rest and liberty seem to me incompatible; one must choose.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
Placing the law above man is a problem in politics that I compare to that of squaring the circle in geometry.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
There will never be a good and solid constitution except one where the law reigns in the hearts of the citizens; as long as the legislative force does not go that far, the laws will always be evaded.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
By what means, then, can we move hearts, and make the fatherland and its laws loved? [...] By institutions that seem idle to superficial men, but which form cherished habits and invincible attachments.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
I look at modern nations. I see many makers of laws, but not a single legislator.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
It is national institutions that form the genius, the character, the tastes, and the morals of a people, that make it itself and not another, that inspire in it that ardent love of the fatherland founded on habits impossible to uproot.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
There are no longer Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, or even Englishmen today [...]; there are only Europeans. All have the same tastes, the same passions, the same morals, because none has received a national form from a particular institution.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
Liberty is a food of good succulence but of strong digestion; it requires very healthy stomachs to tolerate it.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
I laugh at those debased peoples who [...] dare to speak of liberty without even having the idea of it, and, with hearts full of all the vices of slaves, imagine that to be free it is enough to be mutinous.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
It is education that must give souls their national form and so direct their opinions and tastes that they become patriots by inclination, by passion, by necessity.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
A child, upon opening his eyes, must see the fatherland, and until his death must see nothing else.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
The greatness of nations! The extent of States! The first and main source of the misfortunes of mankind [...]. Almost all small states [...] prosper for the sole reason that they are small.
1771-1772
Source: Considerations on the Government of Poland
The education of children is a profession where one must know how to lose time in order to gain it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
By getting used to victory, he became generous, and often shared with the vanquished. This provided me with a moral observation, and I learned thereby what the true principle of generosity was.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
As sight is the sense from which the mind's judgments can be least separated, it takes a great deal of time to learn to see.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
It is only by dint of walking, touching, counting, and measuring dimensions that one learns to estimate them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
I want him to have no other master than nature, nor any other model than objects.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
My intention is not so much that he should know how to imitate objects, but that he should know them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Instead of making us find the proofs, they are dictated to us; [...] the master reasons for us, and exercises only our memory.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The more we distance ourselves from the state of nature, the more we lose our natural tastes; or rather, habit creates for us a second nature that we substitute so much for the first, that none of us knows the latter anymore.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Gluttony is the vice of hearts that have no substance. A glutton's soul is entirely in his palate.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
It is chimeras that adorn real objects, and if imagination adds no charm to what strikes us, the sterile pleasure [...] always leaves the heart cold.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
If he reads less well than another child in our books, he reads better in the book of nature; his mind is not in his tongue, but in his head.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
He does not know what routine, custom, or habit is; what he did yesterday does not influence what he does today: he never follows a formula, never yields to authority or example [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
In the social state, the good of one necessarily creates the ill of another. This relationship is in the essence of the thing and nothing can change it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The only useful habit for children is to submit effortlessly to the necessity of things, and the only useful habit for men is to submit effortlessly to reason.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
We can only know the use of our organs after having employed them. Only long experience can teach us to make the most of ourselves [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
I felt I was made for retreat and the countryside; it was impossible for me to live happily elsewhere.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Nothing vigorous, nothing great can come from a purely venal pen.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
It is too difficult to think nobly when one only thinks in order to live.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
To be able, to dare to speak great truths, one must not be dependent on one's success.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I had seen that everything was radically dependent on politics, and that [...] no people would be other than what the nature of their government made them to be.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Most men, in the course of their lives, are often dissimilar to themselves, and seem to transform into entirely different men.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I can only meditate when walking; as soon as I stop, I no longer think, and my mind only moves with my feet.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The thirst for happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The first of my needs, the greatest, the strongest, the most inextinguishable, was entirely in my heart: it was the need for an intimate companionship [...].
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Until then I had been good; from that moment on I became virtuous, or at least intoxicated by virtue.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
When I no longer saw men, I ceased to despise them; when I no longer saw the wicked, I ceased to hate them.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
In matters of happiness and enjoyment, I needed all or nothing.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Consumed by the need to love without ever having been able to satisfy it, I saw myself reaching the gates of old age, and dying without having lived.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The impossibility of reaching real beings threw me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing in existence worthy of my delirium, I nurtured it in an ideal world [...].
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
A born enemy of all party spirit, I had frankly told both sides harsh truths to which they had not listened.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The general will is always right and always tends to the public utility.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
One always wants one's own good, but one does not always see it.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The people are never corrupted, but they are often deceived, and it is only then that they seem to want what is bad.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, the former considers private interest [...].
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Take away from the [...] particular wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and the general will remains as the sum of the differences.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If, when the people, being sufficiently informed, deliberate, the citizens had no communication among themselves, [...] the deliberation would always be good.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
When factions arise, and partial associations are formed [...], the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its members, and particular in relation to the State.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
We may then say that there are no longer as many voters as there are men, but only as many as there are associations.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
When one of these associations is so large as to prevail over all the rest, [...] there is no longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is only a particular opinion.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
It is important [...] that there should be no partial society within the State and that each citizen should think only for himself.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If there are partial societies, it is necessary to multiply their number and prevent their inequality.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
These precautions are the only good ones for ensuring that the general will is always enlightened, and that the people are not mistaken.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
The agreement of two private interests is formed by opposition to a third.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
If there were no different interests, one would hardly feel the common interest, which would never find any obstacle: everything would go of its own accord, and politics would cease to be an art.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
To suffer is the first thing he must learn, and the one he will most need to know.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Our teaching and pedantic mania is always to teach children what they would learn much better by themselves, and to forget what we alone could have taught them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
What then must we think of this barbaric education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, which loads a child with all sorts of chains, and begins by making him miserable to prepare for him some distant, supposed happiness [...]?
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Men, be humane, it is your first duty [...]. What wisdom is there for you outside of humanity? Love childhood; favor its games, its pleasures, its lovable instinct.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
It is [...] in the disproportion between our desires and our faculties that our misery consists. A sensitive being whose faculties equaled his desires would be an absolutely happy being.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The real world has its limits, the imaginary world is infinite: unable to enlarge the one, let us shrink the other; for it is from their difference alone that all the sorrows that make us truly unhappy are born.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Man is very strong when he is content to be what he is: he is very weak when he wants to rise above humanity.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Foresight [...], which constantly carries us beyond ourselves and often places us where we will never arrive, this is the true source of all our miseries.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
O man! Confine your existence within yourself, and you will no longer be miserable. Remain in the place that nature assigns you in the chain of being, nothing can make you leave it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The truly free man wants only what he can, and does what he pleases. This is my fundamental maxim.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
The dependency on things, having no morality, does not harm freedom, and engenders no vices: the dependency on men, being disordered, engenders them all [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Do you know the surest way to make your child miserable? It is to accustom him to getting everything.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Let us establish as an incontestable maxim that the first movements of nature are always right: there is no original perversity in the human heart.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Shall I dare to state here the greatest, most important, most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to waste it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Respect childhood, and do not be in a hurry to judge it, for good or for ill. Let nature act for a long time before you meddle with acting in its place, for fear of thwarting its operations.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1782 Edition
Life is short, less because of the short time it lasts, than because we have almost no time of this short duration to enjoy it.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
We are born, so to speak, twice: once to exist, and again to live.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Our passions are the main instruments of our preservation: it is therefore an undertaking as vain as it is ridiculous to want to destroy them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The source of our passions, [...] the only one that is born with man and never leaves him as long as he lives, is self-love.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Self-love, which regards only ourselves, is content when our true needs are satisfied; but vanity (amour-propre), which compares, is never content [...].
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
What makes man essentially good is to have few needs and to compare himself little with others; what makes him essentially wicked is to have many needs and to depend greatly on opinion.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
One only loves after having judged, one only prefers after having compared.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
[...] Opinion raises an unshakable throne, and stupid mortals, enslaved to its empire, base their own existence only on the judgments of others.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
It is man's weakness that makes him sociable; it is our common miseries that move our hearts to humanity.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
A truly happy being is a solitary being.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Pity is sweet because, in putting ourselves in the place of the one who suffers, we nevertheless feel the pleasure of not suffering as they do.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Men are not naturally kings, nor nobles, nor courtiers, nor rich; all are born naked and poor, all subject to the miseries of life [...], all are condemned to death.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The common people show themselves as they are, and are not likable; but people of high society must disguise themselves; if they showed themselves as they are, they would be horrifying.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The man of the world is entirely in his mask. Being almost never in himself, he is always a stranger there [...]. What he is, is nothing; what he appears to be is everything to him.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
One of the great vices of history is that it depicts men much more by their bad sides than by their good ones.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
One must descend into other classes to know the true customs of a country; for those of the rich are almost everywhere the same.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
So far I have seen many masks; when shall I see the faces of men?
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
It is the union of hearts that makes their true happiness; their attraction knows no law of distance [...].
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
These solitary pleasures are dead pleasures. O love! yours are alive; it is the union of souls that animates them.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I hold as suspect any observer who prides himself on wit: I always fear that he sacrifices the truth of things to the brilliance of his thoughts.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The flowery jargon of gallantry is much further from true feeling than the simplest tone one can take.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
All great passion is serious [...]. I want its cheerfulness to be simple, without ornament, without art, naked like itself.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
One of the greatest evils of absence, [...] is the anxiety about the current state of the one you love.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
It is one of love's miracles to make us find pleasure in suffering.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
It is madness to want to study the world as a mere spectator. He who only pretends to observe, observes nothing [...]. One only sees others act insofar as one acts oneself.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
[...] where all morality is pure verbiage, one can be austere without consequence.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
No man dares to be himself. One must do as others do; that is the first maxim of the country's wisdom. This is done, that is not done: there is the supreme decision.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The honest man here is not the one who does good deeds, but the one who says beautiful things.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Every day [...] I lock my feelings under key, to take up others that lend themselves to the frivolous objects that await me.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I can hardly imagine what sort of goodness a book can have that does not lead its readers to do good.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all, and the earth to no one!
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
The first feeling of man was that of his existence; his first care that of his preservation.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
[...] the first glance he cast upon himself produced the first movement of pride.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
The love of well-being is the sole motive of human actions.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
[Comforts] were the first yoke they imposed on themselves without thinking, and the first source of the evils they prepared for their descendants.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
The deprivation of [comforts] became much more cruel than their possession was sweet, and people were unhappy to lose them, without being happy to possess them.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
Each one began to look at the others and to want to be looked at himself, and public esteem acquired a price. [...] this was the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
From the moment one man needed the help of another, [...] equality disappeared, property was introduced, labor became necessary.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
For the poet, it is gold and silver, but for the philosopher, it is iron and grain which have civilized men and ruined the human race.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
To be and to seem became two totally different things, and from this distinction sprang imposing ostentation, deceitful cunning, and all the vices that follow in their train.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
All ran headlong to their chains, believing they were securing their liberty.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
The savage man does not bend his head to the yoke that civilized man bears without a murmur, and he prefers the most stormy liberty to a tranquil subjection.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
The savage lives within himself; the sociable man, always outside himself, knows only how to live in the opinion of others, and it is [...] from their judgment alone that he derives the sense of his own existence.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
It is manifestly against the Law of Nature [...] that a handful of people should gorge on superfluities, while the starving multitude lacks the necessities of life.
1755
Source: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
Honor and indignation gave me a strength that had not been counted on.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Fortune favored my audacity.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I accepted with eagerness and gratitude.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
[...] I was inflexible.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I pledged to [...] provide for her subsistence as much as I could, and to never let her want for bread, as long as I had any myself.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Nothing is simpler or more necessary [...] than to leave your house when you do not approve of my staying there.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
It was my destiny to enter it against my will, and to leave it in the same manner.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I thank you for the stay [...], and I would thank you more if I had not paid for it so dearly.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
You are right to believe me unhappy; no one in the world knows better than you how much I must be.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
If it is a misfortune to be mistaken in the choice of one's friends, it is another no less cruel to recover from so sweet an error.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
This period of my life had an influence on what followed that will extend until my last day.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I felt a courage I had never known before; all my strength had returned.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
What pleasant thoughts I hoped to bring to this solitary place, where the gentle sight of nature alone was to drive from my memory all that social and artificial order that has made me so unhappy!
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I thought I saw the image of virtue where I was seeking that of pleasure.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
There is in the meditation of honest thoughts a kind of well-being that the wicked have never known; it is that of being pleased with oneself.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The enjoyment of virtue is entirely internal [...]; but all the advantages of vice strike the eyes of others, and only the one who has them knows what they cost.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Breakfast is the meal of friends [...]. It is almost the only moment when one is allowed to be who one is.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
After so many cruel trials, I am learning to distrust errors as much as the passions of which they are so often the product.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
One sees nothing when one is content to watch; one must act oneself to see men act, and I made myself an actor to be a spectator.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Cold reason has never done anything illustrious, and one only triumphs over passions by opposing them to one another.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Maxims become less general the better one reads into hearts.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Think only of the present, and I will answer for the future.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I feel with sorrow that the weight of a past fault is a burden that one must carry one's entire life.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
Beware of that dangerous virtue, humility, which only animates self-love [...], and believe that the noble frankness of an upright soul is preferable to the pride of the humble.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
There is no true happiness on earth. [...] A secret sorrow, a single sorrow, poisons it, and I am not happy.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
The error that deceives and troubles [us] is to confuse the times and to reproach oneself [...] for what is only the effect of a too-tender memory.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
No woman ever succumbs unless she has wanted to succumb.
1761
Source: Julie, or the New Heloise
I have lost all my happiness; [...] He could change!
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
I would like to think of it no more: I think of it ceaselessly.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
Nothing can cure my love, and everything increases my sadness.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
His vanity has done you an outrage that his love must repair.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
To make yourself loved more, pretend to love a little less.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
Love grows if it worries; it falls asleep if it is content.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
The slightly coquettish shepherdess makes the shepherd more constant.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
One serves both fortune and love poorly at the same time.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
With a faithful and tender heart, one has the right to obtain everything.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
When one knows how to love and to please, does one need any other good?
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
I would still have preferred [love] to all the goods of the universe.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
Art is favorable to love, and without art, love knows how to charm.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
In the city one is more amiable, in the village one knows how to love better.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
Love, according to its whim, commands and disposes of us; this god allows jealousy, and this god punishes the jealous.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
By flitting from one beauty to another, one often loses the happy moment; often a too-faithful shepherd is less loved than an inconstant one.
1752
Source: The Village Soothsayer
My first idea [...] was to value at its true price all that is called fame and reputation among men.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
For the first time I felt my natural pride bend beneath the yoke of necessity.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
If ever [my memoir] sees the light of day, [...] there one will know, I hope, the soul [...] that my contemporaries so little wished to know.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
It seemed to me that [...] I would be more separated from men, more sheltered from their outrages, more forgotten by them, more given over, in a word, to the sweetness of idleness and the contemplative life.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
[...] a just, good man, without bitterness, without hatred, without jealousy, quick to recognize his own wrongs, quicker to forget those of others, seeking all his felicity in loving and gentle passions [...].
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The age of romantic projects having passed, [...] my only remaining hope was to live without constraint, in eternal leisure.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The idleness of social circles is deadly, because it is of necessity; that of solitude is charming, because it is free and of will.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The idleness I love is not that of a loafer [...]. It is at once that of a child who is constantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a rambler whose mind wanders while his arms are at rest.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I like to occupy myself with trifles, to start a hundred things and finish none, to come and go as my fancy takes me, to change projects at every moment [...].
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I understand how city dwellers, who see only walls, streets, and crimes, have little faith; but I cannot understand how country people, and especially solitary people, can have none.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I find no more worthy homage to the Divinity than that mute admiration which the contemplation of His works excites [...].
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The moment I was adrift gave me a joy [...] whose cause I can neither explain nor fully understand, if it were not perhaps a secret congratulation for being in that state, beyond the reach of the wicked.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
It was enough for some good to flatter my heart for me to expect to lose it.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I felt a singular pleasure in seeing the waves break at my feet. I made of it an image of the tumult of the world, and of the peace of my dwelling.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Made to meditate at leisure in solitude, I was not made to speak, act, or deal with affairs among men. Nature, which had given me the first talent, had denied me the other.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I wept, I sighed, I desired a happiness of which I had no idea, and of which I felt the deprivation.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Shame, the companion of a guilty conscience, had come with the years; it had increased my natural timidity to the point of making it invincible.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
There is no true happiness without wisdom, and [...] wisdom belongs to all conditions.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
If every man could read into the hearts of all others, there would be more people who would want to go down than those who would want to go up.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The enthusiasm for sublime virtues was of little use in society; [...] the continuity of small duties, always well fulfilled, demanded no less strength than heroic actions.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
It was infinitely better to always have the esteem of men than sometimes their admiration.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
My foolish ambition sought fortune only through adventures: and, seeing no woman in all of this, this way of succeeding seemed slow, painful, and sad to me.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
My soul, proof against fortune, has known no true good or evil except those that do not depend on it.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Foresight has always spoiled my enjoyment. I have seen the future to no avail; I have never been able to avoid it.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
He who feels only love does not feel what is sweetest in life.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Two almost unassociable things are united in me [...]: a very ardent temperament, lively, impetuous passions, and slow, confused ideas that never present themselves until afterwards.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
My ideas arrange themselves in my head with the most incredible difficulty: they circulate there mutely, they ferment to the point of moving me, heating me up, giving me palpitations.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I cannot see what I see; I see clearly only what I recall, and I have wit only in my memories.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I have never been able to do anything with a pen in my hand in front of a table and my paper; it is while walking, amidst the rocks and woods [...] that I write in my brain.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I would enjoy society like anyone else, if I were not sure of showing myself there not only to my disadvantage, but as someone completely different from who I am.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Of the right of the strongest.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
That one must always go back to a first convention.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty [...]; what he gains is civil liberty.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
That Sovereignty is inalienable.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
That Sovereignty is indivisible.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Whether the general will can err.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
On the limits of the Sovereign power.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
That not every form of Government is suited to every country.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Of the signs of a good Government.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Of the abuse of Government and its tendency to degenerate.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
Of the death of the body politic.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
That the institution of Government is not a contract.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
That the general will is indestructible.
1762
Source: On the Social Contract
One cannot have a young heart with impunity when the body has ceased to be so.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Having recovered from the chimeras of friendship, detached from all that had made me love life, I no longer saw anything in it that could make it pleasant for me.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I was in the most unbearable position for a man whose imagination is easily ignited.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
[...] this sadness without bitterness was only that of a heart too loving, too tender, which, deceived by those it had believed to be of its own kind, was forced to withdraw into itself.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I regretted leaving my fellow men without them feeling my full worth, without them knowing how much I would have deserved their love had they known me better.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
To still appear to be the friend of a man whose friend one has ceased to be is to reserve for oneself the means of harming him by deceiving honest people.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
There is only good and bad fortune in this world; and it seems that every act of courage is a crime in adversity.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Courage in misfortune irritates cowardly hearts, but it pleases generous ones.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
My worst faults have been of omission: I have rarely done what should not be done, and unfortunately I have even more rarely done what should have been done.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Any unequal association is always disadvantageous to the weaker party.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
To ruin oneself only to be bored is too unbearable.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I felt [...] that there is no human interior, however pure it may be, that does not conceal some odious vice.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Nothing binds hearts so much as the sweetness of weeping together.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The curses of scoundrels are the glory of the just man.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
I have always been all or nothing.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Heaven, protector of virtue, I praise you! I touch a land of liberty.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Thus, blind and confident in my hopes, I have always been passionate about what was to cause my misfortune.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
My surprised postilion thought I was mad.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Ah! Let us breathe for a few moments [...]. I need to regain courage and strength there; I will soon find a use for them.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
It is not without reason that I have elaborated [...] on all the circumstances I could recall.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
Once you hold the thread of the plot, [the circumstances] can shed light on its progress.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
If [...] I had continued to stand firm as I had begun, [...] would I have been judged all the same?
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
A great question, on which the solution to many others depends.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
The importance of the smallest details in the presentation of facts whose secret causes we seek, in order to discover them by induction.
1782-1789
Source: The Confessions (Rousseau)
To suffer is the first thing he must learn, and the one he will most need to know.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Our teaching and pedantic mania is always to teach children what they would learn much better by themselves, and to forget what we alone could have taught them.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
What are we to think [...] of this barbaric education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, which loads a child with chains of all kinds, and begins by making him miserable [...]?
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Men, be humane, it is your first duty [...]. What wisdom is there for you outside of humanity?
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Love childhood; encourage its games, its pleasures, its lovable instinct. [...] Why do you want to fill with bitterness and sorrow these first swift years [...]?
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Humanity has its place in the order of things; childhood has its own in the order of human life: one must consider the man in the man, and the child in the child.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
It is [...] in the disproportion between our desires and our faculties that our misery consists.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The real world has its limits, the imaginary world is infinite; unable to enlarge the one, let us shrink the other; for it is from their difference alone that all the sorrows that make us truly unhappy are born.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Foresight [...] which constantly carries us beyond ourselves, and often places us where we will never arrive, that is the true source of all our miseries.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
O man! Confine your existence within yourself, and you will no longer be miserable.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The truly free man wants only what he can do, and does what he pleases. That is my fundamental maxim.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Society has made man weaker, not only by taking away the right he had over his own strength, but especially by making it insufficient for him.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
There are two kinds of dependence: that on things, which is from nature; that on men, which is from society. Dependence on things [...] does not harm freedom, and does not breed vices.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Nature wants children to be children before being men. If we want to pervert this order, we will produce premature fruits, which will have neither maturity nor flavor.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
The first education must [...] be purely negative. It consists not in teaching virtue or truth, but in protecting the heart from vice and the mind from error.
1762
Source: Emile, or On Education/1852 Edition
Rare and happy times when one can think freely, and say what one thinks!
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
Never have the most just judgments of Heaven shown with such evidence that if the Gods think of us, it is less to preserve us than to punish us.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
The secret of the Empire was at last revealed, and it was seen that the Prince could be chosen elsewhere than in the Capital.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
Under a prince once odious, everything he does, good or bad, brings him the same blame.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
The defenseless Provinces [...] did not even have the choice of their chains and were but the prize of the victors.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
Adversity tears the soul, but happiness corrupts it.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
[One must] govern a People who can bear neither extreme servitude nor complete liberty.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
The right of blood and of birth [...] makes a Prince by chance: but adoption permits a choice, and the public voice indicates it.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
All men die equally [...]; but posterity distinguishes them by glory or oblivion.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
Sovereign power acquired by crime was never virtuously exercised.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
There reigned neither tranquility nor tumult, but a silence that marked at once fear and indignation.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
[It was] not to honor [the deceased], but according to the maxim of Princes to provide for their present safety by the fear of future punishments.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
The less sincere the zeal, the more one affected to show it.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
As long as he was a private man he seemed above his station, and everyone would have judged him worthy of the Empire, had he never attained it.
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History
How to avoid making impious vows [...] when the outcome of the war could only reveal the more wicked as the victor?
1754
Source: Translation of the First Book of Tacitus's History