14 Quotes Tagged: rousseau

Liberty can be obtained, it cannot be regained.

[Rousseau is] the person whom I most revere both for the Force of [his] Genius and the Greatness of [his] mind [...]

So here I am, all alone on this earth, with no brother, neighbour, or friend, and no company but my own. The most sociable and loving of human beings has by common consent been banished by the rest of society. In the refinement of their hatred they have continued to seek the cruellest forms of torture for my sensitive soul, and they have brutally severed all the ties which bound me to them. I would have loved my fellow men in spite of themselves. Only by ceasing to be men have they succeeded in losing my affection for them. So now they are strangers, persons unknown who mean nothing to me since that is what they wanted. But what about me, cut off from them and from everything else, what am I? This is what remains for me to find out now.

On the other hand, nothing would have been so miserable as savage man, dazzled by enlightenment, tormented by passions, and reasoning about a state different from his own.

Il me semble que sous les ombrages d'une forêt je suis oublié, libre et paisible comme si je n'avais plus d'ennemis.

To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.

"On the 30th of September we dined together at the Mitre. I attempted to argue for the superiour happiness of the savage life, upon the usual fanciful topicks. JOHNSON. "Sir, there can be nothing more false. The savages have no bodily advantages beyond those of civilised men. They have not better health; and as to care or mental uneasiness, they are not above it, but below it, like bears. No, Sir; you are not to talk such paradox: let me have no more of't. It cannot entertain, far less can it instruct. Lord Monboddo, one of your Scotch Judges, talked a great deal of such nonsense. I suffered him; but I will not suffer you." — BOSWELL. "But, Sir, does not Rousseau talk such nonsense?" JOHNSON. "True, Sir; but Rousseau knows he is talking nonsense, and laughs at the world for staring at him." BOSWELL. "How so, Sir?" JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, a man who talks nonsense so well, must know that he is talking nonsense.

In instinct alone, man had everything he needed in order to live in the state of nature; in a cultivated reason, he has only what he needs to live in society.

Yes, I can understand that a man might go to gambling table - when he sees that all that lies between himself and death is his last crown

Joie est mon caractere,
C'est la faute a Voltaire;
Misere est mon trousseau
C'est la faute a Rousseau.
[Joy is my character,
'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
Misery is my trousseau
'Tis the fault of Rousseau.]
- Gavroche

Rousseau (I’ll note with your permission)
Could not conceive how solemn Grimm
Dared clean his nails in front of him,
The madcap sage and rhetorician.
Champion of rights and liberty,
In this case judged wrong-headedly.
One still can be a man of action
And mind the beauty of one’s nails:
Why fight the age’s predilection?
Custom’s a despot and prevails.

What do I have to fear from them now that everything is over? Since they can no longer make things any worse for me, they can no longer frighten me. Anxiety and terror are ills from which they have delivered me for ever: this is real relief for me. Real ills have little hold over me; I deal easily with those that I actually experience, but not with those that I fear. My fevered imagination adds them together, turns them over and over, draws them out and increases them. The expectation of them tortures me a hundred times more than their actual presence, and the threat of them is far worse than the blow itself. As soon as they happen, the experience of them strips them of their imagined aura and cuts them down to their true size.