I finally finished Emile today. Here are some of my favorite quotations:
[T]he first of all useful things, the art of forming men, is still forgotten. (33)
But what prevents them from ever acquiring a pronunciation as clear as that of peasants is the necessity of learning many things by heart and of reciting aloud what they have learned: their study habituates them to mumbling, to pronouncing negligently and badly. (72)
As soon as they can sense the pleasure of being, arrange it so that they can enjoy it, arrange it so that at whatever hour God summons them they do not die without having tasted life. (79)
Emile will never learn anything by heart, not even fables. (112)
How much ocular knowledge can be acquired by touch, even without touching anything at all?
The scientific atmosphere kills science. (176)
Among so many admirable methods for abridging the study of the sciences we greatly need someone to provide us with a method for learning them with effort. (176)
If I have made myself understood up to now, one should conceive how I imperceptibly give my pupil, with the habit of exercising his body and of manual labor, the taste for reflection and meditation. This counterbalances in him the idleness which would result from his indifference to men's judgments and from the calm of his passions. He must work like a peasant and think like a philosopher so as not to be as lazy as a savage. The great secret of education is to make the exercises of the body and those of the mind always serve as relaxations from one another. (202)
The goal is less to teach him a truth than to show him how he must always go about discovering the truth. (205)
In the state of nature there is a de facto equality that is real and indestructible, because it is impossible in that state for the difference between man and man by itself to be great enough to make one dependent on another. In the civil state there is a de jure equality that is chimerical and vain, because the means designed to maintain it themselves serve to destroy it, and because the public power, added to that of the stronger to oppress the weak, breaks the sort of equilibrium nature had placed between them. (236)
[I]f you give him practice at spying on others' actions too closely, you make him a scandalmonger and a satirist. [...] If you want to instruct him by principles and teach him, along with the nature of the human heart, the external causes which are brought to bear on it and turn our inclinations into vices, you employ a metaphysic he is not able to understand by thus transporting him all of a sudden from sensible objects to intellectual objects. [...] To remove both of these obstacles at once and to put the human heart in his reach without risk of spoiling his own, I would want to show him men from afar, to show him them in other times or other places and in such a way that he can see the stage without ever being able to act on it. This is the moment for history. (237)
Philosophy in maxims is suitable only to those who have experience. Youth ought to generalize in nothing. (239)
History in general is defective in that it records only palpable and distinct facts which can be fixed by names, places, and dates, while the slow and progressive causes of these facts, which cannot be similarly assigned, always remain unknown. (239)
The philosophic spirit has turned the reflections of several writers of our age in this direction. But I doubt that the truth gains by their work. The rage for systems having taken possession of them all, each seeks to see things not as they are but as they agree with his system. (240)
What would be required, in order to observe men well? A great interest in knowing them and a great impartiality in judging them. (244)
Man does not easily begin to think. But as soon as he begins, he never stops. (254)
The word spirit has no sense for anyone who has not philosophized. (255)
Everything is infinite for children. (257)
If I had to depict sorry stupidity, I would depict a pedant teaching the catechism to children. (257)
God is intelligent, but in what way? (285)
Thank heaven, we are delivered from all that terrifying apparatus of philosophy. We can be men without being scholars. Dispensed from consuming our life in the study of morality, we have at less expense a more certain guide in this immense maze of human opinions. But it is not enough that this guide exists; one must know how to recognize it and to follow it. (290f.)
I need reasons for subjecting my reason. (297)
He who begins by choosing a single people for Himself and proscribing the rest of mankind is not the common Father of men. (299)
The Church decides that the Church has the right to decide. (303)
I shall never believe that I have seriously heard the arguments of the Jews until they have a free state, schools, and universities, where they can speak and dispute without risk. Only then will we be able to know what they have to say. (304)
Do you not see that before I put faith in this book which you call sacred, and of which I understand nothing, I must be informed by people other than you when and by whom it was written, how it was preserved, how it was transmitted to you, what arguments are given by those in your country who reject it, although they know as well as you all that you teach me? (305)
No one is exempt from the first duty of man; no one has a right to rely on the judgment of others. (306)
But God forbid that I ever preach the cruel dogma of intolerance to them, that I ever bring them to detest their neighbor, to say to other men, "You will be damned." (309)
The distinction between civil tolerance and theological tolerance is puerile and vain. These two tolerances are inseparable, and one cannot be accepted without the other. (309)
Bayle has proved very well that fanaticism is more pernicious than atheism, and this is incontestable. (312)
Dare to acknowledge God among the philosophers; dare to preach humanity to the intolerant. (313)
All the crimes committed among the clergy, as elsewhere, do not prove that religion is useless, but that very few people are religious. (313)
One of the things that makes preaching most useless of that it is done indiscriminately to everyone without distinction or selectivity. (319)
Therefore, never talk reason to young people, even when they are at the age of reason, without first putting them in a condition to understand it. (319)
In the woods, in rural places, the lover and the hunter are so differently affected that from the same objects they take away entirely different images. (320)
There are periods in human life which are made never to be forgotten. (321)
After establishing my authority, my first care will be to avoid the necessity of using it. (326)
Let us call your future beloved Sophie. The name Sophie augurs well. If the girl whom you choose does not bear it, she will at least be worthy of bearing it. (329)
It would be very dangerous if instinct taught your pupil to trick his senses and to find a substitute for the opportunity of satisfying them. Once he knows this dangerous supplement, he is lost. (334)
Show your weaknesses to your pupil if you want to cure his own. (334)
One can learn to think in places where bad taste reigns. (342)
I see to it that he notices that the individuals who compose the academies are always worth more alone than as part of the group. He will draw for himself the implication about the utility of all these fine establishments. (344)
Why bother building mansions for myself, when others do it for me throughout the universe? (347)
A person is never ridiculous except when he follows fixed practices. (351)
Exclusive pleasures are the death of pleasure. True entertainments are those one shares with the people. (354)
To find her, it is necessary to know her. (357)
I would not be upset if she were allowed to use a little cleverness, not to elude punishment for disobedience but to get herself exempted from obeying. [...] The only issue is preventing its abuse. (370)
One can shine by means of adornment, but one can please only by means of one's person. (372)
In love everything is only illusion. I admit it. But what is real are the sentiments for the truly beautiful with which love animates us and which it makes us love. (391)
She knows how to take advantage even of her defects, and if she were more perfect, she would be much less pleasing. (393)
Therefore, it is not suitable for a man with education to take a wife who has none, or, consequently, to take a wife from a rank in which she could not have an education. (409)
Wherever strangers are rare, they are welcome. Nothing makes one more hospitable than seldom needing to be. It is the abundance of guests that destroys hospitality. (413)
Most of the habits you believe you give to children and young people are not true habits. (432)
But, dear Emile, it is in vain that I have dipped your soul in the Styx; I was not able to make it everywhere invulnerable. A new enemy is arising which you have not learned to conquer and from which I can no longer save you. This enemy is yourself. (443)
Here then is another apprenticeship, and this apprenticeship is more painful than the first; for nature delivers us from the ills it imposes on us, or it teaches us to bear them. But nature says nothing to us about those which come from ourselves. It abandons us to ourselves. (445)
Perhaps upon your return you will find her as indifferent as up to now you have found her responsive. (448)
They separate as if they were never to see each other again. (450)
To become informed, it is not sufficient to roam about through various countries. It is necessary to know how to travel. (452)
"There is," I shall say to him, "another means of employing one's time and person. That is to join the service--that is to say, to hire yourself out very cheaply to go and kill people who have done us no harm. This trade is in high esteem among men, and they make an extraordinary fuss about those who are good only for this. Furthermore, this trade, far from allowing you to dispense with other resources, only makes them more necessary to you. For one aspect of the honor of the military estate is the impoverishment of those who devote themselves to it. It is true that they are not all impoverished by it. It is even gradually becoming fashionable to enrich oneself in this trade as in the others. But when I explain to you how those who succeeded in doing so go about it, I doubt that I will make you eager to imitate them. You will also find out that even in this trade the main point is no longer courage or valor, except perhaps with women. On the contrary, the most groveling, the basest, and the most servile is always the most honored. If you take it into your head to really want to perform your trade, you will be despised, hated, and perhaps driven out; at best, you will be overwhelmed by improper treatment and supplanted by all your comrades for having done your service in the trenches while they did theirs in ladies' dressing rooms." (456)
His aim is not to write books, and if he ever does, it will be not in order to pay court to the powers that be but to establish the rights of humanity. (458)
We shall further note that since no one is held to commitments made only with himself, public deliberation [...] cannot obligate the state to itself. From which one can see that there neither is nor can be any other fundamental law properly speaking than the social pact alone. This does not mean that the body politic cannot in certain respects commit itself to another; for with respect to foreigners, it becomes a simple being, an individual. (461)
In each country the pupils are engages with another century. It is as if they were involved with another country. The result is that, after having roamed Europe at great expense, abadoned to frivolities or boredom, they return without having seen anything which can interest them or learned anything which can be useful to them. (467f.)
France would be much more powerful if Paris were annihilated. (469)
I have even seen to it that in each nation he is connected with some man of merit by a treaty of hospitality, after the fashion of the ancients. I would not be vexed if he were to cultivate these acquaintances by an exchange of letters. Not only is it sometimes useful and always agreeable to carry on correspondence with distant countries, but it is also an excellent precaution against the empire of national prejudices which attack us throughout life and sooner or later get some hold on us. Nothing is more likely to deprive such prejudices of their hold than disinterested interchange with sensible people whom one esteems. (471)
Constraint and love go ill together, and pleasure is not to be commanded. (476)
Take care that in managing his love you do not make him doubt your own. (479)
But when love has lasted a long time, a sweet habit fills the void it leaves behind, and the attraction of a mutual confidence succeeds the transports of passion. (479)
It is necessary to bear the yoke which you have imposed on yourself. Try to merit having it made light for you. Above all, sacrifice to the graces, and do not imagine that you make yourself more loveable by pouting. (479)
If there is happiness on earth, it must be sought in the abode where we live. (480)
All quotations are from the Allan Bloom translation (Basic Books, 1979).
