Men, despite all their ethics, would never be anything more than monsters if nature had not given them pity to bolster their reason. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Let us listen to the inner voice of feeling; what healthy mind can reject its evidence? I believe, therefore, that the world is governed by a wise and powerful will; I see it or rather I feel it, and it is a great thing to know this. I see God everywhere in his works; I feel him within myself. Again, I know that I am a free, active being. In vain do you argue this point with me; I feel it, and it is this feeling which speaks to me more forcibly than the reason which disputes it.

He who would preserve the supremacy of natural feelings in social life knows not what he asks. Ever at war with himself, hesitating between his wishes and his duties, he will be neither a man nor a citizen. He will be of no use to himself nor to others. He will be a man of our day, a Frenchman, an Englishman, one of the great middle class. To be something, to be himself, and always at one with himself, a man must act as he speaks, must know what course he ought to take, and must follow that course with vigour and persistence. When I meet this miracle it will be time enough to decide whether he is a man or a citizen, or how he contrives to be both. Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these conflicting aims. One is public and common to many, the other private and domestic.

My passions, when roused, are intense, and, so long as I am activated by them, nothing equals my impetuosity. I no longer know moderation, respect, fear, propriety; I am cynical, brazen, violent, fearless; no sense of shame deters me, no danger alarms me. Except for the object of my passion, the whole world is as nothing to me; but this only lasts for a moment, and the next I am plunged into utter dejection.