InsaneJournal

The taste for solitude and contemplation was born in my heart together with the expansive feelings whose purpose it is to feed it. Turmoil and noise constrain and suffocate them, calm and peace revive and intensify them. I need to retire within myself in order to love. ... I had longed for the countryside, and I had obtained it; I could not bear subjugation, and I was perfectly free, indeed better than free ... [src]

I struggle to understand the words of wise men; revelation is a form of acquisition of knowledge undesirable for the progress of the human race, and yet to know and realize the full meaning of all the words of Rousseau - of Jesus Christ - of Saint-Simon - at times it seems as though it must be necessary. There are mysteries. I do not understand.

Even so, it seems to me Rousseau would have thought a city empty of its people to be a thoroughly unnatural thing.