Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome natu… - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Let's go dance under the elms:
Step lively, young lassies.
Let's go dance under the elms:
Gallants, take up your pipes.

Oh, mein Freund, bleibe aufrecht stehen, du wirst doch immer der Erde ziemlich nahe sein.

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.