Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

110 Sourced Quotes

The quicker, the louder, the applause with which another tries to gain you over to his purpose--the bitterer his censure if he miss his aim.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Wishes run over in loquacious impotence, will presses on with laconic energy.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The more unharmonious and inconsistent your objects of desire, the more inconsequent, inconstant, unquiet, the more ignoble, idiotical, and criminal yourself.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The enemy of art is the enemy of nature; art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertions of human nature; and what nature will he honor who honors not the human?

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The obstinacy of the indolent and weak is less conquerable than that of the fiery and bold.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Kiss the hand of him who can renounce what he has publicly taught, when convicted of his error; and who, with heartfelt joy, embraces the truth, though with the sacrifice of favorite opinions.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Before thou callest a man hero or genius, investigate whether his exertion has features of indelibility; for all that is celestial, all genius, is the offspring of immortality.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
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.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The acquisition of will, for one thing exclusively, presupposes entire acquaintance with many others.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He who always seeks more light the more he finds, and finds more the more he seeks, is one of the few happy mortals who take and give in every point of time. The tide and ebb of giving and receiving is the sum of human happiness, which he alone enjoys who always wishes to acquire new knowledge, and always finds it.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Where consequence ceases, there folly, restlessness and misery begin.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Existence is self-enjoyment, by means of some object distinct from ourselves.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Man without religion is a diseased creature, who would persuade himself he is well and needs not a physician; but woman without religion is raging and monstrous.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Avoid the eye that discovers with rapidity the bad, and is slow to see the good.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He who goes round about in his requests wants commonly more than he chooses to appear to want.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who begins with severity, in judging of another, ends commonly with falsehood.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Whenever a man undergoes a considerable change, in consequence of being observed by others, whenever he assumes another gait, another language, than what he had before he thought himself observed, be advised to guard yourself against him.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who knows whence he comes, where he is, and whither he tends, he, and he alone, is wise.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The worst of all knaves are those who can mimic their former honesty.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Evasions are the common shelter of the hard-hearted, the false and impotent when called upon to assist; the really great alone plan instantaneous help, even when their looks or words presage difficulties.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
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.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent; still less how to act with vigor and decision. Who hastens to the end is silent; loudness is impotence.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The smiles that encourage severity of judgment hide malice and insincerity.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He who seeks to imbitter innocent pleasure has a cancer in his heart.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who, under pressing temptations to lie, adheres to truth, nor to the profane betrays aught of a sacred trust, is near the summit of wisdom and virtue.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Injustice arises either from precipitation, or indolence, or from a mixture of both. - The rapid and slow are seldom just; the unjust wait either not at all, or wait too long.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The cruelty of the effeminate is more dreadful than that or the hardy.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Be not the fourth friend of him who had three before and lost them.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who forces himself on others is to himself a load. Impetuous curiosity is empty and inconstant. Prying intrusion may be suspected of whatever is little.

Johann Kaspar Lavater