"It is difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living."
Rousseau struggles to keep a job because he's constantly thinking big picture. He wants fame and fortune as an artist, but that desire leads him to abandon all investment in social norms. He considers himself above layman's work and thus unfit to hold a regular job.
“There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.”
In this quotation, readers see an example of Rousseau's self-hatred. After years of running away from and denying his mistakes, he is suffering from some pretty intense guilt. He knows that he is not who he pretends to be, even though he can convince other people temporarily. Wearing a mask even for himself, he can't help but recognize those moments when he feels alienated even by himself.
“The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment.”
By his own admission, Rousseau prefers the unconventional approach to life. He desires to have unlimited time to pursue the thoughts in his head and to form conclusions. In fact he nurtures his impetuous nature in order to increase his creativity. Just like a child is constantly learning and amused but accomplishes very little, Rousseau wants to be constantly occupied by his thoughts and little else.
“I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything . It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer.”
Rousseau writes this book in order to confess the great weight which has been accumulating on his mind. He has behaved shamefully and escaped responsibility for his problems so far, but by the time he makes it to England he knows that he must pay penance for his actions. He blames his problems upon reputation, but he knows that he is ultimately responsible for destroying his own.
