If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? the state of nature from which he has been removed? imagine, wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUThe real world has its limits; the imaginary world is infinite. Unable to enlarge the one, let us restrict the other, for it is from the difference between the two alone that are born all the pains which make us truly unhappy.
More Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes
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I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.
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To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties – of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence.
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Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
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What good is it looking for our happiness in the opinion of others if we can find it in ourselves?
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To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
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Man’s first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.
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There is peace in dungeons, but is that enough to make dungeons desirable?
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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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People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
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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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To 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.
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The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘this is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
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I have never thought, for my part, that man’s freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.
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Girls should learn that so much finery is only put on to hide defects, and that the triumph of beauty is to shine by itself.
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Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
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