My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUTo write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
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If force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation.
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It is a great evil for a Chief of a nation to be born the enemy of the freedom whose defender he should be.
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I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
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I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.
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The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
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There is peace in dungeons, but is that enough to make dungeons desirable?
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What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.
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The sociable man, always outside himself, is capable of living only in the opinions of others and, so to speak, derives the sentiment of his own existence solely from their judgment.
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The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.
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Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
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To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
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I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
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It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
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The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.
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