On the other hand, nothing would have been so miserable as savage man, dazzled by enlightenment, tormented by passions, and reasoning about a state different from his own.
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.” This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution. The.
The good man can be proud of his virtue because it is his. But of what is the intelligent man proud?
For the State, in relation to its members, is master of all their goods by the social contract, which, within the State, is the basis of all rights;.
Those who distinguish civil from theological intolerance are, to my mind, mistaken.
The decent man and the lover holds back even when he could obtain what he wishes. To win this silent consent is to make use of all the violence permitted in love. To read it in the eyes, to see it in the ways in spite of the mouth’s denial, that is the art of he who knows how to love. If he then completes his happiness, he is not brutal, he is decent. He does not insult chasteness; he respects it; he serves it.
We should not, with Warburton, conclude from this that politics and religion have among us a common object, but that, in the first periods of nations, the one is used as an instrument for the other.
Happy am I, for every time I meditate on governments, I always find new reasons in my inquiries for loving my own country.
IN order to discover the rules of society best suited to nations, a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed.
There is, I feel, an age at which an individual man would want to stop. You will seek the age at which you would want your species to have stopped. Dissatisfied with your present state for reasons that portend even greater grounds for dissatisfaction for your unhappy posterity, perhaps you would like to be able to go backwards in time.
El verdadero objeto de mis confesiones es hacer comprender exactamente mi interior en todas las situaciones.
I can understand how it is that city-dwellers, who see only walls and streets and crimes, have so little religion. But I cannot understand how those who live in the country, and the solitary especially, can be lacking in faith. How is it that their souls are not raised in ecstasy a hundred times a day to the Author of the wonders that strike their eyes?
Nada manifiesta tanto las verdaderas inclinaciones de un hombre como las clases de relaciones que contrae ’.
Suffer, die, or get better; but whatever you do, live while you are alive.
The wise man observes the public disorder he cannot prevent; he observes it, and reveals by his sad countenance the grief it causes him; but as for individual disorders, he opposes them or averts his eyes, lest his presence be taken for approval.
Why is man alone subject to becoming an imbecile? Is it not that he thereby returns to his primitive state, and that, while the animal which has acquired nothing and which also has nothing to lose, always retains its instinct, man, in losing through old age or other accidents all that his perfectibility has enabled him to acquire, thus falls even lower than the animal itself?
Happiness has no particular outward sign to discover itself by; we must be able to view the heart before we can be certain who are truly happy; but contentment is to be read in the eyes, the conversation, the accent, the manner, and seems to communicate itself to him that perceives it.
Si hay que permitir a ciertos hombres el librarse al estudio de las ciencias y de las artes, es a aquellos que tengan fuerzas para andar solos en su busca y para adelantarlas. A.
The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing.
If Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to live forever? Hence, if we wish to form a lasting institution, let us not think about making it eternal. In order to succeed we should not attempt the impossible, or flatter ourselves that we are giving the work of men a solidity that does not belong to human things.