Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid but which none have a right to expect.

I may not amount to much but at least I am unique.

The happiest is he who suffers the least pain the most miserable he who enjoys the least pleasure.

Fame is but the breath of the people and that often unwholesome.

If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage the life and death of Jesus were those of a God.

There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.

I hate books they teach us only to talk about what we do not know.

A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.

Whether the woman shares the man's passion or not, whether she is willing or unwilling to satisfy it, she always repulses him and defends herself, though not always with the same vigour, and therefore not always with the same success.

As she put it, she knew of nothing so ravishing as having a child whom she could whip whenever she was in a bad mood.("The Queen Fantasque")

Entirely taken up by the present, I could remember nothing; I had no distinct notion of myself as a person, nor had I the least idea of what had just happened to me. I did not know who I was, nor where I was; I felt neither pain, fear, nor anxiety. I watched my blood flowing as I might have watched a stream, without even thinking that the blood had anything to do with me. I felt throughout my whole being such a wonderful calm, that whenever I recall this feeling I can find nothing to compare with it in all the pleasures that stir our lives.

I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.

Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.

We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of lying to children.

Ah,' thought the king sadly, shrugging his shoulders, "I see clearly that if one has a crazy wife, one cannot avoid being a fool.'("Queen Fantasque")

Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about business and money. One will tell you that in a particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers; another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is worth nothing, and others where he is worth less than nothing. They assess men like herds of livestock. According to them, a man has no value to the State apart from what he consumes in it. Thus one Sybarite would have been worth at least thirty Lacedaemonians. Would someone therefore hazard a guess which of these two republics, Sparta or Sybaris, was overthrown by a handful of peasants and which one made Asia tremble?

Now it is easy to perceive that the moral part of love is a factitious sentiment, engendered by society, and cried up by the women with great care and address in order to establish their empire, and secure command to that sex which ought to obey.

[T]he man who meditates is a depraved animal.