Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

110 Sourced Quotes

Happy the heart to whom God has given enough strength and courage to suffer for Him, to find happiness in simplicity and the happiness of others.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Be certain that he who has betrayed thee once will betray thee again.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
As a man's yes and no, so his character. A prompt yes or no marks the firm, the quick, the decided character; and a slow, the cautious or timid.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He who prays and bites has not a little of the devil in him.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He whose pride oppresses the humble may perhaps be humbled, but will never be humble.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The procrastinator is not only indolent and weak, but commonly, false, too; most of the weak are false.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Take here the grand secret; if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none, and court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Great minds comprehend more in a word, a look, a pressure of the hand, than ordinary men in long conversations, or the most elaborate correspondence.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
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.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Never say you know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
There are but three classes of men: the retrograde, the stationary, the progressive.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed: nature never pretends.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Beware of him who meets you with a friendly mien, and, in the midst of a cordial salutation, seeks to avoid your glance.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Trust not him with your secrets, who, when left alone in the room, turns over your papers.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation will be so before the eye of all the world.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Certain trifling flaws sit as disgracefully on a character of elegance as a ragged button on a court dress.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Indiscretion, rashness, falsehood, levity, and malice, produce each other.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
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.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Vociferation and calmness of character seldom meet in the same person.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The wrath that on conviction subsides into mildness, is the wrath of a generous mind.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who partakes in another's joys is a more humane character than he who partakes in his griefs.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The creditor whose appearance gladdens the heart of a debtor may hold his head in sunbeams and his foot on storms.

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

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He whom common, gross, or stale objects allure, and when obtained, content, is a vulgar being, incapable of greatness in thought or action.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Dread more the blunderer's friendship than the calumniator's enmity.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who gives is positive; who receives is negative; still there remains an immense class of mere passives.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
As you treat your body, so your house, your domestics, your enemies, your friends. Dress is a table of your contents.

Johann Kaspar Lavater