So now I am alone in the world, with no brother, neighbour or friend, nor any company left me but my own. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the ease of stimulating and gratifying our appetites and our senses, the over-elaborate foods of the rich, which inflame and overwhelm them with indigestion, the bad food of the poor, which they often go withotu altogether, so hat they over-eat greedily when they have the opportunity; those late nights, excesses of all kinds, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, exhaustion of mind, the innumerable sorrows and anxieties that people in all classes suffer, and by which the human soul is constantly tormented: these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided nearly all of them if only we had adhered to the simple, unchanging and solitary way of life that nature ordained for us.

Rien de vigoureux, rien de grand ne peut partir d’une plume toute vénale.

Flattery, or rather condescension, is not always a vice, it is more often a virtue, especially
in young people. The kindness with which a man treats us attaches us to
him; one does not give way to him in order to deceive him, one does so
in order not to make him sad, not to return him harm for good.