The collection / 58 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1745 AD

When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

02c. 1745 AD

Great men never make a bad use of their superiority; they see it, they feel it, and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

03c. 1745 AD

The use we make of happiness gives us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

04c. 1745 AD

Kings wish to be absolute, and they are sometimes told that their best way to become so is to make themselves beloved by the people. This maxim is doubtless a very admirable one, and in some respects true; but unhappily it is laughed at in court.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

05c. 1745 AD

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

06c. 1745 AD

The majesty of Scripture strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers; with all their pomp of diction, how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

07c. 1745 AD

Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

08c. 1745 AD

The hatred of the wicked is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just grounds on which it can rest; and the very consciousness of their own injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

09c. 1745 AD

Her pleasures are in the happiness of her family.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote

10c. 1745 AD

The passions are the voice of the body.

Jean Jacques Rousseau / quote