Happiness has no particular outward sign to discover itself by; we must be able to view the heart before we can be certain who are truly happy; but c… - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nowadays, when more subtle studies and more refined taste
have reduced the art of pleasing into principles, a vile and
misleading uniformity governs our customs, and all minds seem
to have been cast in the same mould: incessantly politeness
makes demands, propriety issues orders, and incessantly people
follow customary usage, never their own inclinations. One does
not dare to appear as what one is. And in this perpetual
constraint, men who make up this herd we call society, placed in
the same circumstances, will all do the same things, unless more
powerful motives prevent them. Thus, one will never know well
the person one is dealing with.

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

Sometimes my reveries end in meditation, but more often my meditations end in reverie and during these wanderings, my soul roams and takes flight through the universe on the wings of the imagination and ecstasies that exceed all other pleasures.