66 quotes
It is always a poor way of reading the hearts of others to try to conceal our own.
Ignorance cannot lead to evil, misconceptions lead to evil. It is not what people do know, it’s what they pretend they do.
Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765)
Singing and dancing alone will not advance one in the world.
All that time is lost which might be better employed.
Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.
I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: "Well, let them eat cake".
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765)
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765)
We pity in others only those evils which we have ourselves experienced.
Could we not imagine that noise...is itself nothing more than the sum of a multitude of different sounds which are being heard simultaneously?
Dictionnaire de Musique (1767)
He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765)
Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity; there is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all.
If I am not better, at least I am different.
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
There is a period of life when we go back as we advance.
It is unfortunate for J.J that Rousseau cannot say everything he knows about him.
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (1782)
Society has enfeebled man, not merely by robbing him of the right to his own strength, but still more by making his strength insufficient for his needs.
The world is the book of women.
Days of absence, sad and dreary,
Clothed in sorrow's dark array,—
Days of absence, I am weary:
She I love is far away.
Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I.
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765)
Let's go dance under the elms:
Step lively, young lassies.
Let's go dance under the elms:
Gallants, take up your pipes.
Le devin du village (1752)