Jean-Jacques Rousseau Soul Quotations

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people...

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.

The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never any soul.

It is believed that physiognomy is only a simple development of the features already marked out by nature. It is my opinion, however, that in addition to this development, the features come insensibly to be formed and assume their shape from the frequent and habitual expression of certain affections of the soul. These affections are marked on the countenance; nothing is more certain than this; and when they turn into habits, they must leave on it durable impressions.

Not all the subtilties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent Providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath.

Conscience is the voice of the soul; the passions of the body.

Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm.

The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.

Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.

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.

The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.