Quotes by Jean Rousseau

• It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
• Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
• It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
• The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
• I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.
• However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
• How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
• Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
• The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
• The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.
• The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
• Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
• The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.
• People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
• Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
• Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.
• Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
• Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.
• Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
• Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.
• Man is born free, and everywhere he is in shackles.
• Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
• The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
• Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
• Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
• The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
• Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
• You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
• Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
• When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
• We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.
• We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.
• We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.
• We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.
• To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
• 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.
• All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.
• Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
• Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
• Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
• Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
• Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
• Childhood is the sleep of reason.
• Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
• Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
• Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
• A feeble body weakens the mind.