Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty.

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.

To renounce freedom is to renounce one’s humanity, one’s rights as a man and equally one’s duties.

Alas, it is when we are beginning to leave this mortal body that it most offends us!

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

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

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.

It is a great evil for a Chief of a nation to be born the enemy of the freedom whose defender he should be.

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.