“It is a mistake to classify the passions as lawful and unlawful, so as to yield to the one and refuse the other.  All alike are good if we are their masters; all alike are bad if we abandon ourselves to them.  Nature forbids us to extend our relations beyond the limits of our strength; reason forbids us to want what we cannot get, conscience forbids us, not to be tempted, but to yield to temptation.  To feel or not to feel a passion is beyond our control, but we can control ourselves.  Every sentiment under our own control is lawful; those which control us are criminal.  A man is not guilty if he loves his neighbour’s wife, provided he keeps this unhappy passion under the control of the law of duty; he is guilty if he loves his own wife so greatly as to sacrifice everything to that love.

“Do not expect me to supply you with lengthy precepts of morality, I have only one rule to give you which sums up all the rest.  Be a man; restrain your heart within the limits of your manhood.  Study and know these limits; however narrow they may be, we are not unhappy within them; it is only when we wish to go beyond them that we are unhappy, only when, in our mad passions, we try to attain the impossible; we are unhappy when we forget our manhood to make an imaginary world for ourselves, from which we are always slipping back into our own.  The only good things, whose loss really affects us, are those which we claim as our rights.  If it is clear that we cannot obtain what we want, our mind turns away from it; wishes without hope cease to torture us.  A beggar is not tormented by a desire to be a king; a king only wishes to be a god when he thinks himself more than man.

“The illusions of pride are the source of our greatest ills; but the contemplation of human suffering keeps the wise humble.  He keeps to his proper place and makes no attempt to depart from it; he does not waste his strength in getting what he cannot keep; and his whole strength being devoted to the right employment of what he has, he is in reality richer and more powerful in proportion as he desires less than we.  A man, subject to death and change, shall I forge for myself lasting chains upon this earth, where everything changes and disappears, whence I myself shall shortly vanish!  Oh, Emile! my son! if I were to lose you, what would be left of myself?  And yet I must learn to lose you, for who knows when you may be taken from me?

“Would you live in wisdom and happiness, fix your heart on the beauty that is eternal; let your desires be limited by your position, let your duties take precedence of your wishes; extend the law of necessity into the region of morals; learn to lose what may be taken from you; learn to forsake all things at the command of virtue, to set yourself above the chances of life, to detach your heart before it is torn in pieces, to be brave in adversity so that you may never be wretched, to be steadfast in duty that you may never be guilty of a crime.  Then you