Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cited by
- David Edmonds (1)
- IN: Would You Kill The Fat Man? (2014) Non-Fiction, Philosophy, British
EPIGRAPH: Among so many inhuman and bizarre cults, among this prodigious diversity of morals and characters, you will find everywhere the same ideas of justice and decency, everywhere the same notions of good and bad.
FROM: Emile, or On Education, (1762), Book, France
- Jennifer Anne Champion (1)
- IN: Caterwaul (2016) Poetry, Singaporean
EPIGRAPH: One does not know where a man comes from until he has spoken.
FROM: The Origins of Language, (1781), Essay, Switzerland
- Walter Dean Myers (1)
- IN: All The Right Stuff (2012) Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, American
EPIGRAPH: To live is not merely to breathe: It is to act,
It is to make use of our organs, senses,
faculties -- of all those parts of ourselves
which give us the feeling of existence.
FROM: Emile or On Education, (1762), Book, Switzerland/France
- Robert Silverberg (1)
- IN: The World Inside (1971) Novel, Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Speculative fiction, American
EPIGRAPH: Of all animals, men are the least fitted to live to herds.
If they were crowded together as sheep are they would all
perish in a short time. The breath of man is fatal to his
fellows.
FROM: Emile, I, (1762), Book, France
- Orhan Pamuk (1)
- IN: A Strangeness in my Mind (2014) Fiction, American
EPIGRAPH: The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, "This is mine" and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society.
FROM: Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, (1755), Book, France
- Patrick Kendrick (1)
- IN: Extended Family (2012) Fiction, American
EPIGRAPH: Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, France
- Leah Hager Cohen (1)
- IN: No Book But the World (2014) Fiction, American
EPIGRAPH: Let there be no book but the world.
FROM: Émile; Or, Treatise on Education, (1762), Book, France
- Alice Hoffman (1)
- IN: Second Nature (1994) Fiction, American
EPIGRAPH: Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.
FROM: Emile, or On Education, (1762), Book, France
- S. D. Chrostowska (1)
- IN: Permission (2013) Fiction, NULL
EPIGRAPH: N. Here's your manuscript. I have read it all the way through.
R. All the way through? I see: you expect few will do the same?
N. Vel duo, vel nemo.
R. Turpe et miserabile. But I want a straightforward judgment.
N. I dare not.
R. You have dared everything with that single word. Explain yourself.
N. My judgment depends on the answer you are going to give me. Is this respondence real, or is it a fiction?
R. I don't see that it matters. To say whether a Book is good or bad, how does it matter how much it came to be written?
N. But surely it's no more than a fiction?
R. Suppose it is.
N. In that case, I've never seen such a bad piece of work. These Letters are no Letters; this Novel is no Novel; the characters are people from the other world.
R. Your judgment is harsh; the Public's is bound to be even harsher. Without calling it unjust, I would like to tell you in turn the way I see these Letters...
In seclusion, one has other ways ot seeing and feeling than in involvement with the world; the passions differently modified also have different expressions; the imagination, constantly encountering the same objects, is more vividly affected by them. That small number of images keeps returning, mixes with all these notions, and lends them the odd and repetitious turn one notices inthe conversation of Solitary Folk. Does it then follow that their language is highly forceful? Not at all; it is merely extraordinary. It is only in the world that one learns to speak forcefully ... Passion, overflowing, expresses itself more effusively than forcefully. It does not even think of being persuasive; it does not suspect that anyone may question it.
Let me return to our letters. If you read them as the work of an Author who wishes to please, or who has pretensions of writing, they are detestable. But take them for what they are, and judge them according to their kind.
FROM: Second Preface to Julie, Or the New Heloise, (None), NULL, France
- Mary Wollstonecraft (1)
- IN: Mary; a Fiction (1788) Book, British
EPIGRAPH: L'exercice des plus sublimes vertus éleve et nourrit le génie.
FROM: Emile, (1762), Book, NULL