Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma.

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.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.

Two things, almost incompatible, are united in me in a manner which I am unable to understand: a very ardent temperament, lively and tumultuous passions, and, at the same time, slowly developed and confused ideas, which never present themselves until it is too late. One might say that my heart and my mind do not belong to the same person.

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.