Sensibility is the source of all the passions, imagination determines their course.
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education (1762). copy citation

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Author Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Source Emile, or On Education
Topic sensibility imagination
Date 1762
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Barbara Foxley
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5427/pg5427-images.html

Context

“He is swept along on the torrent of conventional ideas; to rescue him you must urge him in the opposite direction. Imagination must be curbed by feeling and reason must silence the voice of conventionality. Sensibility is the source of all the passions, imagination determines their course. Every creature who is aware of his relations must be disturbed by changes in these relations and when he imagines or fancies he imagines others better adapted to his nature. It is the errors of the imagination which transmute into vices the passions of finite beings, of angels even, if indeed they have passions;” source