How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
What I had to fear while waiting to possess this beloved person was naturally, the anticipation. (5.1.31)
Lust is scarier than the act of sex for Rousseau. He's a complicated guy.
Quote #2
I felt as if I had committed incest and two or three times, as I clasped her rapturously in my arms I wet her bosom with tears. (5.1.37)
Rousseau's lust gets confused with his close bond with Mme de Warens (Mama). Does he know how to identify the feeling of love?
Quote #3
So I was burning with love for no object, and it is perhaps love of this sort that is the most exhausting. (5.1.69)
Again and again, Rousseau associates lust with bad emotions—exhaustion, fear, and anxiety. What's up with that?
Quote #4
She had been seized with too quick and lively a passion to be excusable, but her heart was involved as well as her senses. (6.2.10)
It looks like Rousseau is making some assumptions. He's a smart guy, but he doesn't tell us exactly why he thinks Mme de Larnage is in love with him.
Quote #5
If what I felt for her was not precisely love, it was at least so tender a return for the love she showed me, there was so hot a sensuality in our pleasures and so sweet an intimacy in our talk, that it had all the charm of passion. (6.2.13)
Will you look at that? Rousseau's starting to distinguish between love and lust. Remember, this is the guy who couldn't articulate what love was only a chapter earlier.
Quote #6
Ah, my good Therese, I am only too delighted to possess you good and healthy, and not to find something I was not looking for. (7.1.44)
Rousseau doesn't mind that Therese is a virgin, but she seems to think he might. In a culture with strict gender roles, Rousseau's a pretty liberal guy.
Quote #7
At first I had only been out for amusement. (7.1.45)
Rousseau's sexual relationship with Therese becomes something much more intense after a while. He thinks she's marriage material.
Quote #8
Klufpell had furnished some rooms for a little girl who, however, remained at everyone's disposal because he could not entirely keep her himself. (8.1.14)
Rousseau doesn't shy away from details about his life that he finds distasteful, like sharing a prostitute with his friends.