If only people thought a little more about it, they would see that life is not worrying about so much.

Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.

One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.

O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!

Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although frequently neither acknowledges the fact to himself.

You men do not understand the delights of a glance, of a pressure of the hand... but as for me, I swear to you that, when I listen to your voice, I feel such a deep, strange bliss that the most passionate kisses could not take its place.

The history of a man's soul, even the pettiest soul, is hardly less interesting and useful than the history of a whole people; especially when the former is the result of the observations of a mature mind upon itself, and has been written without any egotistical desire of arousing sympathy or astonishment. Rousseau's Confessions has precisely this defect – he read it to his friends.