Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

110 Sourced Quotes

He who, silent, loves to be with us - he who loves us in our silence - has touched one of the keys that ravish hearts.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He, who boldly interposes between a merciless censor and his prey, is a man of vigor: and he who, mildly wise, without wounding, convinces him of his error, commands our veneration.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
It is possible that a wise and good man may be prevailed on to game; but it is impossible that a professed gamester should be a wise and good man.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
As man's love or hatred, so he. Love and hatred exist only personified.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
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?

Johann Kaspar Lavater
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.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The loss of taste for what is right is loss of all right taste.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
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 honor, friendship, virtue.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The freer you feel yourself in the presence of another, the more free is he.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
A single spark of occasion discharges the child of passions into a thousand crackers of desire.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The greatest of characters, no doubt, would be he, who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium, always at hand, and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every object in its true shape and colour through all the fluctuation of things.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who cuts is easily wounded. The readier you are to offend the sooner you are offended.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Trust him with none of thy individualities who is, or pretends to be, two things at once.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Know in the first place, that mankind agree in essence, as they do in limbs and senses.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Many very intelligent agreeable persons have warts on the forehead, not brown, nor very large, between the eyebrows, which have nothing in them offensive or disgusting. - But a large brown wart on the upper lip, especially when it is bristly, will be found in no person who is not defective in something essential, or at least remarkable for some conspicuous failing.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who has witnessed one free and unconstrained act of yours, has witnessed all.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Who recollects distinctly his past adventures, knows his destiny to come.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
The more uniform a man's voice, step, manner of conversation, handwriting--the more quiet, uniform, settled, his actions, his character.

Johann Kaspar Lavater