A Quote by Johann Kaspar Lavater

Copiousness and simplicity, variety and unity, constitute real greatness of character.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Quote Topics

Character Constitute Greatness Real Simplicity Unity Variety

Quote Author

Johann Kaspar Lavater
German - Theologian
November 15, 1741 - January 2, 1801

When Coleridge tried to define beauty, he returned always to one deep thought; beauty, he said, is unity in variety! Science is nothing else than the search to discover unity in the wild variety of nature,-or, more exactly, in the variety of our experience. Poetry, painting, the arts are the same search, in Coleridge's phrase, for unity in variety.

Jacob Bronowski

If there is anything the artist or a true work of art teaches us, it is that variety and complexity really increase the unity, and that to achieve unity within a great variety of complexity is a greater achievement and more satisfying piece of art than to achieve unity with just a few elements, which is relatively easily achieved.

David Steindl-Rast

A good character today is shaped by greatness, greatness in vision, greatness in courage, greatness in insight, greatness in purpose and devotion.

A. Powell Davies

The true greatness of nations is in those qualities which constitute the greatness of the individual.

Charles Sumner

The relations that define a system as a unity, and determine the dynamics of interaction and transformations which it may undergo as such a unity constitute the organization of the machine.

Francisco Varela

If you have unity without variety, you have uniformity and that's boring. If you have variety without unity, you have anarchy.

Skip Heitzig

I believe in highlighting the 'greatness' that I see in every single woman that I come across. There is such beauty in variety. It may not always be evident, when you look at a woman, where her greatness lies. But the truth is that the greatness of women is reflected in the very essence of who we are.

Raheem DeVaughn

There's a lot of real unity - and a lot fake unity, sadly. I think a lot of people are going to get an opportunity to pursue greatness and pursue careers outside of D.C. Not everybody is going to make it. I think there's a connotation that there's a lack of rappers out there.

Wale

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity - I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly.

Plato

Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed.

Mary Parker Follett

Canada has no cultural unity, no linguistic unity, no religious unity, no economic unity, no geographic unity. All it has is unity.

Kenneth E. Boulding

Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, recognizes that it is man's destiny to unite and not divide, and understands that creating proletariats and scapegoats and second-class citizens is a mean and contemptible activity.

Northrop Frye

The ordinary people will consider it lack of simplicity to harmonize all the changes throughout ten thousand years. With a tired body and a frightened mind, they toil to avoid this and to take that. The sage alone has no prejudice. He therefore proceeds with utter simplicity and becomes one with transformation and always roams in the realm of unity.