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.

Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content, we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom.

Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

We lose all that time which we might employ better.

He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.

People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society.