Patience patience quotes is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the bittersweet nature of love, highlighting how one may regret love not for its joyful moments, but for the inevitable sadness that follows.
In this quote, Rousseau expresses a complex sentiment about love, indicating that while the moments of joy and pleasure in loving someone are cherished, they are ultimately shadowed by the pain of loss or longing that often comes after. This suggests that love is intertwined with both happiness and sorrow, and the memories of love can linger with a sense of nostalgia and regret for the fleeting nature of such emotions.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a wedding toast, one might quote Rousseau to express the deep complexities of love.
More from Jean-Jacques Rousseau
All quotes βThe infant, on opening his eyes, ought to see his country, and to the hour of his death never lose sight of it.
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.
As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares.
To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.
Similar quotes
Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.
Love was just a word to me. Until you came along and gave it meaning.
Staunch & faithful little lovers that they are, they give back a hundred fold every sign of love one ever gives them β & it mitigates the pang of losing them to know how very happy a little affection has made them .
I have nothing more to give you than my heart. Spanish saying Hearts are not to be had as a gift hearts are to be earned.
Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
Love, it seems to me, is that condition in which one is most contentedly oneself.