Quotes by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

About Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century. His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment in France and across Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the overall development of modern political and educational thought.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half ...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Time takes no holiday. It does not roll idly by, but through our senses works its own wonders in the mind. Time came and went from one day to the next; in its coming and its passing it brought me other hopes and other memories. [quoted in Peter Brown...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Life is a misery, death an uncertainty. Suppose it steals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it true that death will cut off and put an end to all care and all feeling...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own — not that for which I erred, but the itself. Base, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction — not seeking anything through the shame but the shame itself!

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to Yo...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I had brought from Paris the national prejudice against Italian music; but I had also received from nature that acute sensibility against which prejudices are powerless. I soon contracted the passion it inspires in all those born to understand it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind commands the hand to move, and it so easy that one hardly distinguishes the order from its execution. Yet mind is mind and hand is body. The m...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You are not the mind itself. For You are the Lord God of the mind. All these things are liable to change, but You remain immutable above all things.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What do I love when I love my God?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Author Bio

  • NameJean-Jacques Rousseau
  • DescriptionGenevan philosopher
  • BornJune 28, 1712
  • DiedJuly 2, 1778
  • CountryFrance; Switzerland
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Botanist; Composer; Choreographer; Writer; Musicologist; Literary; Musician; Novelist; Autobiographer; Music Theorist