Top 396 Quotes & Sayings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Page 6

The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation.

Women, in general, are not attracted to art at all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius.

There is one further distinguishing characteristic of man which is very specific indeed and about which there can be no dispute, and that is the faculty of self-improvement - a faculty which, with the help of circumstance, progressively develops all our other faculties.

An honest man nearly always thinks justly.

Liberty is not to be found in any form of government; she is in the heart of the free man; he bears her with him everywhere.

Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be.

What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, civil as well as political.

In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.

It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.

When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason.

Men speak from knowledge, women from imagination.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.

Inopportune consolations increase a deep sorrow.

We do not know either unalloyed happiness or unmitigated misfortune. Everything in this world is a tangled yarn; we taste nothing in its purity; we do not remain two moments in the same state. Our affections as well as bodies, are in a perpetual flux.

If all were perfect Christians, individuals would do their duty; the people would be obedient to the laws, the magistrates incorrupt, and there would be neither vanity nor luxury in such a state.

Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand before the Sovereign Judge, and cry with a loud voice, This is my work, there were my thoughts, and thus was I. I have freely told both the good and the bad, have hid nothing wicked, added nothing good.

The science of government is only a science of combinations, of applications, and of exceptions, according to times, places and circumstances.

A blue-stocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one. [Fr., Une femme bel-esprit est le fleau de son mari, de ses enfants, de ses amis, de ses valets, et tout le monde.]

Gracefulness cannot subsist without ease; delicacy is not debility; nor must a woman be sick in order to please. Infirmity, and sickness may excite our pity, but desire and pleasure require the bloom and vigor of health.

The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.

The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it ... is, for all members of the state ... the rule of what is just or unjust.

A person who can break wind is not dead.

The world is woman's book. [Fr., Le monde est le livre des femmes.]

I may not amount to much, but at least I am unique.

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.

It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires, and who can doubt that the interest we have in admitting or denying the reality of the Judgement to come determines the faith of most men in accordance with their hopes and fears.

Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm.

My bad head cannot adjust itself to the way things are.... If I want to depict spring, it has to be in wintertime; if I want to describe a beautiful landscape, I must be enclosed within walls; and I have said a hundred times that if I were put in the Bastille, there I would paint a picture of liberty.

For it is in our nature to endure patiently the decrees of fate, but not the ill-will of others.

To live is not breathing it is action.

A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.

Sacrifice life to truth.

I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different.

Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.

Childhood is the sleep of reason. [Fr., L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.]

Generally we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain.

Every blue-stocking will remain a spinster as long as there are sensible men on the earth. [Fr., Toute fille lettree restera fille toute sa vie, quand il n'y aura que des hommes senses sur la terre.]

Our greatest evil flows from ourselves.

Everything degenerates in the hands of man.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Since men cannot create new forces, but merely combine and control those which already exist, the only way in which they can preserve themselves is by uniting their separate powers in a combination strong enough to overcome any resistance, uniting them so that their powers are directed by a single motive and act in concert.

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often contradict each other?

I say to myself: "Who are you to measure infinite power?

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

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

All that time is lost which might be better employed.

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

He who eats in idleness that which he himself has not earned, steals it; and a capitalist whom the state pays for doing nothing differs little in my eyes from a brigand, who lives at the expense of passers-by.

I don't know what is truth,but I can tell you how to find it!

Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given to us by education.

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.

The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never any soul.

Universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people.

The members of a body-politic call it "the state" when it is passive, "the sovereign" when it is active, and a "power" when they compare it with others of its kind. Collectively they use the title "people," and they refer to one another individually as "citizens" when speaking of their participation in the authority of the sovereign, and as "subjects" when speaking of their subordination to the laws of the state.

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake".

Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.

There are two things to be considered with regard to any scheme. In the first place, Is it good in itself? In the second, Can it be easily put into practice?

The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.

Anticipation and Hope are born twins.

Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart.