Confessions Quotes

“I know the feelings of my heart, and I know men. I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. Whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mould in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Confessions

“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, Confessions

“It is as if my heart and my brain did not belong to the same person. Feelings come quicker than lightning and fill my soul, but they bring me no illumination; they burn me and dazzle me.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“My illusions about the world caused me to think that in order to benefit by my reading I ought to possess all the knowledge the book presupposed. I was very far indeed from imagining that often the author did not possess it himself, but had extracted it from other books, as and when he needed it. This foolish conviction forced me to stop every moment, and to rush incessantly from one book to another; sometimes before coming to the tenth page of the one I was trying to read I should, by this extravagant method, have had to run through whole libraries. Nevertheless I stuck to it so persistently that I wasted infinite time, and my head became so confused that I could hardly see or take in anything.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“So finally we tumble into the abyss, we ask God why he has made us so feeble. But, in spite of ourselves, He replies through our consciences: 'I have made you too feeble to climb out of the pit, because i made you strong enough not to fall in.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything . It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Never have I thought so much, never have I realised my own existence so much, been so much alive, been so much myself ... as in those journeys which I have made alone and afoot. Walking has something in it which animates and heightens my ideas: I can scarcely think when I stay in one place ; my body must be set a-going if my mind is to work. The sight of the country, the succession of beautiful scenes ... releases my soul, gives me greater courage of thought, throws me as it were into the midst of the immensity of the objects of Nature ... my heart, surveying one object after another, unites itself, identifies itself with those in sympathy with it, surrounds itself with delightful images, intoxicates itself with emotions the most exquisite.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions

“Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“My passions, when roused, are intense, and, so long as I am activated by them, nothing equals my impetuosity. I no longer know moderation, respect, fear, propriety; I am cynical, brazen, violent, fearless; no sense of shame deters me, no danger alarms me. Except for the object of my passion, the whole world is as nothing to me; but this only lasts for a moment, and the next I am plunged into utter dejection.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“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, Confessions

“The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me. What passions, it may be asked. Trifles, the most childish things in the world. Yet they affected me as much as if the possessions of Helen, or the throne of the Universe, had been at stake.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“I have somewhere read of a wise bishop who in a visit to his diocese found an old woman whose only prayer consisted in the single interjection "Oh!-

"Good mother" said he to her, "continue to pray in this manner; your prayer is better than ours." This better prayer is mine also.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Those who read this will not fail to laugh at my gallantries, and remark, that after very promising preliminaries, my most forward adventures concluded by a kiss of the hand: yet be not mistaken, reader, in your estimate of my enjoyments; I have, perhaps, tasted more real pleasure in my amours, which concluded by a kiss of the hand, than you will ever have in yours, which, at least, begin there.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“ذلك أن استحالة اقتناص المخلوقات الحقيقية طوحت بي إلى عالم الأوهام و الخيالات.. و عندما عز على أن أرى في الوجود من هم أهل لصبابتي, و حتى أغذي هذه الصبابة من عالم مثالي, سرعان ما عمره خيالي الخصب بأناس ممن يميل إليهم فؤادي!.. أبدا ما لقي هذه المنبع مني مثل هذا الترحيب, و أبدا ما كان يوما مثمرا إلى هذه الحد!.. و رحت في نوبات الهيام أسكر بجرعات دسمة من أبهج المشاعر التي دبت يوما في قلب إنسان.”
― جان جاك روسو, Confessions

“.. فكيف قدر لرجل حبته الطبيعة بروح واسعة الآفاق, و كانت الحياة لديه هي الحب, .. كيف قدر لي أن أعجز-حتى ذلك الحين - عن العثور على صديق يكون لي كل نفسه .. صديق صادق, و انا الذي كنت أشعرأنني خلقت لكي أكون كذلك..”
― جان جاك روسو, Confessions

“وكنت أجد العزاء في أنني كنتُ أحيا في النصف الأفضل من نفسي.”
― جان جاك روسو, Confessions

“فكيف كان يتسنّى لي - و أنا في عنفوان الشباب - أن أشعر بشوقٍ قليل إلى المتعة الأولى؟... و كيف قدر لي أن أرقب ساعة القرب بألم أكثر مني بابتهاج؟... كيف حدث أنني شعرت بنفور و خوف تقريبًا، بدلا من أن أشعر بالمباهج التي كانت خليقة بأن تسكرني؟”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“بقدر ما كانت اللحظة التي أُوحيَ إليّ فيها بفكرة الفرار حزينة ، فإن اللحظة التي أقدمت فيها على تنفيذ الفكرة بدت مبهجة.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“aunque nazca uno con algún talento, el arte de escribir no se aprende repentinamente. Remití”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, LAS CONFESIONES

“Hasta entonces me había hablado de mí solo, como a un niño; desde aquel momento empezó a tratarme como a un hombre, y me habló de sí misma. Me”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, LAS CONFESIONES

“La vida ambulante es la que mejor me conviene. Ir de camino con buen tiempo, por un país hermoso, sin llevar prisa, y tener un objeto agradable por término del viaje, he ahí, de todos los modos de vivir, el que más me agrada.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, LAS CONFESIONES

“The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts,...

...but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Rien ne rétrécit plus l’esprit, rien n’engendre plus de riens, de rapports, de paquets, de tracasseries, de mensonges, que d’être éternellement renfermés vis-à-vis les uns des autres dans une chambre, réduits pour tout ouvrage à la nécessité de babiller continuellement.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Confessions

“Hard to rouse and hard to restrain: that had been a constant trait in my character.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Your beginning," he said to me, "is the rule of what will be required of you: seek to behave so as to do more afterwards, but watch out never to do less.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“Then, turning toward me, he said to me, "My child, in almost everything the beginnings are rough; however yours will not be very much so. Be prudent, and seek to please everyone here; at present this is your sole business. For the rest, have courage; we want to take care of you.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions