Johann Kaspar Lavater - Aphorisms on man

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You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are decidedly bad.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Say not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of God, who sees him not in man.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.

Johann Kaspar Lavater
He who has no taste for order, will be often wrong in his judgment, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Johann Kaspar Lavater