Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann Quotes

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Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want - the want of money.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
There appears to exist a greater desire to live long than to live well! Measure by man's desires, he cannot live long enough; measure by his good deeds, and he has not lived long enough; measure by his evil deeds, and he has lived too long.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Gambling houses are temples where the most sordid and turbulent passions contend; there no spectator can be indifferent. A card or a small square of ivory interests more than the loss of an empire, or the ruin of an unoffending group of infants, and their nearest relatives.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Suicides pay the world a bad compliment. Indeed, it may so happen that the world has been beforehand with them in incivility. Granted. Even then the retaliation is at their own expense.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Unless the habit leads to happiness the best habit is to contract none.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The necessities that exist are in general created by the superfluities that are enjoyed.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
We never read without profit if with the pen or pencil in our hand we mark such ideas as strike us by their novelty, or correct those we already possess.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Silence is a trick when it imposes. Pedants and scholars, churchmen and physicians, abound in silent pride.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
When we meet with better fare than was expected, the disappointment is overlooked even by the unscrupulous. When we meet with worse than was expected, philosophers alone know how to make it better.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Time is never more misspent than while we declaim against the want of it; all our actions are then tinctured with peevishness. The yoke of life is certainly the least oppressive when we carry it with good-humor; and in the shades of rural retirement, when we have once acquired a resolution to pass our hours with economy, sorrowful lamentations on the subject of time misspent and business neglected never torture the mind.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The man whose bosom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his torments under the friendly shade of every tree; and experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
In fame's temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Laugh as loud as you please at your companion's wit; do not even smile at his folly.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The quarter of an hour before dinner is the worst that suitors can choose.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Leisure, the highest happiness upon earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude. Indolence and indifference do not always afford leisure; for true leisure is frequently found in that interval of relaxation which divides a painful duty from an agreeable recreation; a toilsome business from the more agreeable occupations of literature and philosophy.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Many species of wit are quite mechanical; these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Never lose sight of this important truth, that no one can be truly great until he has gained a knowledge of himself, a knowledge which can only be acquired by occasional retirement.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Books afford the surest relief in the most melancholy moments.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Take care to be an economist in prosperity. There is no fear of your being one in adversity.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
In the sallies of badinage a polite fool shines; but in gravity he is as awkward as an elephant disporting.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The rich and luxurious may claim an exclusive right to those pleasures which are capable of being purchased by pelf, in which the mind has no enjoyment, and which only afford a temporary relief to languor by steeping the senses in forgetfulness; but in the precious pleasures of the intellect, so easily accessible by all mankind, the great have no exclusive privilege; for such enjoyments are only to be procured by our own industry.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Novels do not force their fair readers to sin, they only instruct them how to sin; the consequences of which are fully detailed, and not in a way calculated to seduce any but weak but weak minds; few of their heroines are happily disposed of.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
That happy state of mind, so rarely possessed, in which we can say, "I have enough," is the highest attainment of philosophy.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The lust of dominion innovates so imperceptibly that we become complete despots before our wanton abuse of power is perceived; the tyranny first exercised in the nursery is exhibited in various shapes and degrees in every stage of our existence.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labors to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Poor wine at the table of a rich host is an insult without an apology.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie; say but little, 'twill scarcely gain belief; so strong are partiality and envy.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann