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Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes - Page 12

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Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Reading, Men, People
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2013). “Emile”, p.340, Courier Corporation

There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Doers, Ill
Jean Jacques Rousseau (2015). “The Social Contract”, p.144, Jean Jacques Rousseau

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?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Practice, Two, Firsts
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2013). “Emile”, p.3, Courier Corporation

Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Creative, Nihilism, Genius
"The Social Contract & Discourses".

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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Change, Two, Yarn

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?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Passion, Voice, Soul
"Emile: Or, On Education".

I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any one of them. So I chose another guide and said, Let me follow the Inner Light; it will not lead me so far astray as others have done, or if it does it will be my own fault, and I shall not go so far wrong if I follow my own illusions as if I trusted to their deceits.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Philosophy, Light, Doubt
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1979). “The indispensable Rousseau”, Quartet Books (UK)

Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence differs in degrees; man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs; he could do without her better than she can do without him. She cannot fulfill her purpose in life without his aid, without his goodwill, without his respect.....Nature herself has decreed that woman, both for herself and her children, should be at the mercy of man s judgment.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Children, Men, Desire
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2013). “Emile”, p.392, Courier Corporation

The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Solitude, Occupation, Want

To abstain that we may enjoy is the epicurianism of reason.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
May, Eating, Reason
"Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations". Compiled by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt and Kate Louise Roberts, 1922.

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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Art, Knowledge, Genius

And when the relics of humanity left among the Spaniards induced them to forbid their lawyers to set foot in America, what must they have thought of jurisprudence? May it not be said that they thought, by this single expedient, to make reparation for all the outrages they had committed against the unhappy Indians?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Feet, America, Humanity
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Gustave Le Bon, Charles Mackay, Wilfred Trotter, Everett Dean Martin (2017). “WHAT IS MOB MENTALITY? - 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts of the Herd, The Social Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...”, p.178, e-artnow

This dog, which, although no beauty, was of an uncommon breed, I had made my friend and companion; and it certainly deserved the name better than the majority of those who had assumed it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dog, Names
"The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau".

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
People, Soul, Spurs

It has always pleased me to read while eating if I have no companion; it gives me the society I lack. I devour alternately a page and a mouthful; it is as though my book were dining with me.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Food, Book, Giving

Every artists wants to be applauded

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Artist, Want
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2012). “The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two "Discourses" and the "Social Contract"”, p.27, University of Chicago Press

I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Real, Passion, Heart

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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Men, Self, Helping

Jewish authors would never have invented either that style nor that morality; and the Gospel has marks of truth so great, so striking, so utterly inimitable, that the invention of it would be more astonishing than the hero.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Hero, Style, Would Be

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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Fortune, Knows, Bad Fortune

The truth brings no man a fortune.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Men, Fortune

I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything . It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Liars, Should Have, Punishment
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1971). “The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau”

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Atheist, Law, Atheism

The social compact sets up among the citizens as equality of such kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rights, Citizens, Kind
Jean Jacques Rousseau (2015). “The Social Contract”, p.138, Jean Jacques Rousseau

Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Giving, Soul, Feelings
"A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern". Book by Tryon Edwards, p. 2., 1908.

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