Jean Jacques Rousseau

Ignacio Emmanuel de Altuna was one of those rare individuals, whom Spain alone produces, too seldom for her own glory. He was not a man of the violent national passions common to his countrymen; the idea of revenge was as far from his mind as the desire of it from his heart. He was too proud to be vindictive, and I have often heard him say, with great sang-froid, that no living man could offend him. He was gallant without being tender; he played with women as if they had been pretty children; he amused himself with his friends’ mistresses, but I never knew him to have one himself, or even to desire it. The flames of the virtue which consumed his heart never suffered the passions of desire to become excited.

I can understand how it is that the inhabitants of cities, who see nothing but walls, streets and crimes, have so little religious belief; but I cannot understand how those who live in the country, especially in solitude, can have none. How is it that their soul is not lifted up in ecstasy a hundred times a day to the Author of the wonders which strike them?

So difficult is it to manage the irritable amour-propre of literary men, and such great care is necessary, in paying them compliments, to leave nothing which can even be suspected of a double meaning.

for the first time since the existence of the world, an author permits himself, by a single stroke of the pen, to make so many villains without distinction.

An enemy to everything that comes under the denomination of party, faction, and cabal, I have never expected any good from those who belong to them.

I have learned to doubt whether a man, who is the possessor of a large fortune, whoever he may be, can be sincerely fond of my principles and their originator.

It is in the country that one learns to love and serve humanity; one only learns to despise it in cities.

I know nothing which exercises a more powerful influence upon my heart than an act of courage, performed at an opportune moment, on behalf of the weak who are unjustly oppressed

The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the causes of its destruction.

At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.

all peoples have a kind of centrifugal force that makes them continually act one against another, and tend to aggrandise themselves at their neighbours' expense.

The more concert reigns in the assemblies, that is, the nearer opinion approaches unanimity, the greater is the dominance of the general will. On the other hand, long debates, dissensions and tumult proclaim the ascendancy of particular interests and the decline of the State.