Men, despite all their ethics, would never be anything more than monsters if nature had not given them pity to bolster their reason.
To exist is to feel; our feeling is undoubtedly earlier than our intelligence, and we had feelings before we had ideas.
I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading, and that I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive.
The oftener the choice fell upon old men, the oftener it became necessary to repeat it, and the more the trouble of such repetitions became sensible; electioneering took place; factions arose; the parties contracted ill blood; civil wars blazed forth; the lives of the citizens were sacrificed to the pretended happiness of the state; and things at last came to such a pass, as to be ready to relapse into their primitive confusion.
It was requisite for men to be thought what they really were not. To be and to appear became two very different things, and from this distinction sprang pomp and knavery, and all the vices which form their train.
Respect childhood, and leave nature to act for a long time before you get involved with acting in its place.
Above all he is jealous of his own self-respect; this is his most valued possession and it would be a real loss to him were he to acquire the respect of others at the expense of his own.
The mind has its needs, as does the body. The needs of the latter are the foundations of society; the needs of the former make it pleasant.
We are ever looking forward or backward, ruminating on what is past, and can return no more, or anticipating the future, which may never arrive; there is nothing solid to which the heart can attach itself, neither have we here below any pleasures that are lasting.
So now I am alone in the world, with no brother, neighbour or friend, nor any company left me but my own.
Sometimes my reveries end in meditation, but more often my meditations end in reverie and during these wanderings, my soul roams and takes flight through the universe on the wings of the imagination and ecstasies that exceed all other pleasures.
Born as I was the citizen of a free state and a member of its sovereign body, the very right to vote imposes on me the duty to instruct myself in public affairs, however little influence my voice may have in them.
In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.
Liberty can be obtained, it cannot be regained.
I believe compulsory labor is less opposed to liberty than taxes.
When a man is set in authority over others, everything conspires to rob him of his sense of justice and reason.
In the depths of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be good is good, what I feel to be bad is bad.
Every free action has two causes which concur in producing it, one moral, namely the will which determines it, the other physical, namely the power which executes it.
This is how in every condition the guilty strong person saves himself at the expense of the innocent weak one...
It makes me feel very much what I believe I have said in some work, that remorse sleeps during a prosperous fate and grows sour in adversity.