Top 242 Quotes & Sayings by Johann Kaspar Lavater
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a German theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
Depend on no man, on no friend but him who can depend on himself. He only who acts conscientiously toward himself, will act so toward others.
He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.
The jealous are possessed by a mad devil and a dull spirit at the same time.
Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.
Don't speak evil of someone if you don't know for certain, and if you do know ask yourself, why am I telling it?
Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.
He submits to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.
Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.
The great rule of moral conduct is next to God, respect time.
You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.
Who makes quick use of the moment is a genius of prudence.
What do I owe to my times, to my country, to my neighbors, to my friends? Such are the questions which a virtuous man ought often to ask himself.
Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character.
You may tell a man thou art a fiend, but not your nose wants blowing; to him alone who can bear a thing of that kind, you may tell all.
The prudent see only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprise; the hero sees both; diminishes the former and makes the latter preponderate, and so conquers.
Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.
The public seldom forgive twice.
Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?
If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already.
Say not you know another entirely till you have divided an inheritance with him.
You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are decidedly bad.
There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.
I am prejudiced in favor of him who, without impudence, can ask boldly. He has faith in humanity, and faith in himself. No one who is not accustomed to giving grandly can ask nobly and with boldness.
Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship.
Mistrust the person who finds everything good, and the person who finds everything evil, and mistrust even more the person who is indifferent to everything.
Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.
He, who cannot forgive a trespass of malice to his enemy, has never yet tasted the most sublime enjoyment of love.
If you see one cold and vehement at the same time, set him down for a fanatic.
Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends.
He also has energy who cannot be deprived of it.
Learn the value of a man's words and expressions, and you know him. Each man has a measure of his own for everything; this he offers you inadvertently in his words. He who has a superlative for everything wants a measure for the great or small.
What knowledge is there of which man is capable that is not founded on the exterior,--the relation that exists between visible and invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible?
There are no friends more inseparable than pride and hardness of heart, humility and love, falsehood and impudence.
Where pride begins, love ceases.
A beautiful smile is to the female countenance what the sunbeam is to the landscape; it embellishes an inferior face and redeems an ugly one.
All belief that does not make us more happy, more free, more loving, more active, more calm, is, I fear, a mistaken and superstitious belief.
He who attempts to make others believe in means which he himself despises is a puffer; he who makes use of more means than he knows to be necessary is a quack; and he who ascribes to those means a greater efficacy than his own experience warrants is an impostor.
He who can conceal his joys, is greater than he who can hide his griefs
Who recollects distinctly his past adventures, knows his destiny to come.
Women are proverbially credulous.
Avoid the eye that discovers with rapidity the bad, and is slow to see the good.
The conscience is more wise than science.
Who cuts is easily wounded. The readier you are to offend the sooner you are offended.
The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million.
Who is open without levity; generous without waste; secret without craft; humble without meanness; bold without insolence; cautious without anxiety; regular, yet not formal; mild, yet not timid; firm, yet not tyrannical - is made to pass the ordeal of honour, friendship, virtue.
He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers and ceases when he has no more to say is in possession of some of the best requisites of man
A fop of fashion is the mercer's friend, the tailor's fool, and his own foe.
If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.
Strange that cowards cannot see that their greatest safety lies in dauntless courage.
Venerate four characters: the sanguine who has checked volatility and the rage for pleasure; the choleric who has subdued passion and pride; the phlegmatic emerged from indolence; and the melancholy who has dismissed avarice, suspicion and asperity.
Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil and still more the man who is indifferent to everything.
The countenance is more eloquent than the tongue.
The acquisition of will, for one thing exclusively, presupposes entire acquaintance with many others.
It is one of my favorite thoughts that God manifests Himself to men in all the wise, good, humble, generous, great, and magnanimous men.
Know in the first place, that mankind agree in essence, as they do in limbs and senses.
Three days of uninterrupted company in a vehicle will make you better acquainted with another, than one hour's conversation with him every day for three years.
Who, in the midst of just provocation to anger, instantly finds the fit word which settles all around him in silence is more than wise or just; he is, were he a beggar, of more than royal blood, he is of celestial descent.
Be certain that he who has betrayed thee once will betray thee again.
Truth, wisdom, love, seek reasons; malice only seeks causes.
He who, in questions of right, virtue, or duty, sets himself above all ridicule, is truly great, and shall laugh in the end with truer mirth than ever he was laughed at.
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