Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan-born philosopher, novelist and composer whose work shaped the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and modern political and educational thought. Émile (1762), his treatise on education framed as the upbringing of a fictional boy, and The Social Contract of the same year are his most influential books. A central theme across his work is that human unhappiness grows from the gap between our desires and our powers — the very idea behind this quotation.