Jean-Jacques Rousseau
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.Collection: Great
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.Collection: Alone
A feeble body weakens the mind.Collection: Fitness
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.Collection: Patience
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.Collection: Imagination
Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.Collection: Education
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.Collection: Good
How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?Collection: Famous
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.Collection: Thankful
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.Collection: Money
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.Collection: Death
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.Collection: Truth
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.Collection: Good
O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.Collection: Age
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?Collection: Great
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Death
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.Collection: War
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.Collection: Strength
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.Collection: Freedom
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.Collection: Knowledge
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.Collection: Nature
I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.
I only see clearly what I remember.
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.
Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
I may be no better, but at least I am different.
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
God made me and broke the mold.
Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.
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.
Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?
I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.
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.
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.
Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.