Reveries of a Solitary Walker (or Reveries of the Solitary Walker, French title: Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire) is an unfinished book by Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written between 1776 and 1778. It was the last of a number of works composed toward the end of his life which were deeply autobiographical in nature. Previous elements in this group included The Confessions and Dialogues: Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques. The book is divided into ten chapters called "Walks". The Eighth and Ninth Walks were completed, but not revised by Rousseau, and the Tenth Walk was incomplete at Rousseau's death. The first publication was in 1782.
The content of the book is a mix of autobiographical anecdote, descriptions of the sights, especially plants, that Rousseau saw in his walks around Paris, and elaborations and extensions of arguments previously made by Rousseau in fields like education and political philosophy.
Famous quotes containing the words reveries of, reveries, solitary and/or walker:
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)