Top 100 Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes
#4. Beware of biting jests; the more truth they carry with them, the greater wounds they give, the greater smarts they cause, and the greater scars they leave behind them.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#6. Trust him little who praise all, him less who censures all and him least who is indifferent about all.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#7. 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
#11. In the society of ladies, want of sense is not so unpardonable as want of manners.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#12. Faces are as legible as books, only with these circumstances to recommend them to our perusal, that they are read in much less time, and are much less likely to deceive us.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#13. Who begins with severity, in judging of another, ends commonly with falsehood.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#15. He who freely praises what he means to purchase, and he who enumerates the faults of what he means to sell, may set up a partnership with honesty.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#17. He who reforms himself has done more towards reforming the public than a crowd or noisy, impotent patriots.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#19. To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#21. 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
#22. What do I owe to my times, to my country, to my neighbors, to my friends? Such are the questions which a virtuous man ought often to ask himself.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#23. I am prejudiced in favor of him who, without impudence, can ask boldly. He has faith in humanity, and faith in himself. No one who is not accustomed to giving grandly can ask nobly and with boldness.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#24. Who knows whence he comes, where he is, and whither he tends, he, and he alone, is wise.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#28. As you treat your body, so your house, your domestics, your enemies, your friends. Dress is a table of your contents.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#31. What is the elevation of the soul? A prompt, delicate, certain feeling for all that is beautiful, all that is grand; a quick resolution to do the greatest good by the smallest means; a great benevolence joined to a great strength and great humility.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#33. Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#40. 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
#44. He who comes from the kitchen, smells of its smoke; and he who adheres to a sect, has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student; and dry inhumanity him who herds with literary pedants.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#45. 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
#46. He whose pride oppresses the humble may perhaps be humbled, but will never be humble.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#48. Don't speak evil of someone if you don't know for certain, and if you do know ask yourself, why am I telling it?
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#51. He who always prefaces his tale with laughter, is poised between impertinence and folly.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#52. Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#53. The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#54. The acquisition of will, for one thing exclusively, presupposes entire acquaintance with many others.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#56. 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
#57. There are many kinds of smiles, each having a distinct character. Some announce goodness and sweetness, others betray sarcasm, bitterness and pride; some soften the countenance by their languishing tenderness, others brighten by their spiritual vivacity.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#60. Nothing is so pregnant as cruelty; so multifarious, so rapid, so ever teeming a mother is unknown to the animal kingdom; each of her experiments provokes another and refines upon the last; though always progressive, yet always remote from the end.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#61. The ambitious sacrifices all to what he terms honor, as the miser all to money.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#63. Do not believe that a book is good, if in reading it thou dost not become more contented with thy existence, if it does not rouse up in thee most generous feelings.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#64. The more any one speaks of himself, the less he likes to hear another talked of.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#65. Trust him with none of thy individualities who is, or pretends to be, two things at once.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#66. True worth is as inevitably discovered by the facial expression, as its opposite is sure to be clearly represented there. The human face is nature's tablet, the truth is certainly written thereon.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#68. 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
#70. Close thine ear against him that shall open his mouth secretly against another. If thou receivest not his words, they fly back and wound the reporter. If thou dost receive them, they fly forward and wound the receiver.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#72. Who cuts is easily wounded. The readier you are to offend the sooner you are offended.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#73. He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#77. Receive no satisfaction for premeditated impertinence; forget it, forgive it, but keep him inexorably at a distance who offered it.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#79. True genius repeats itself forever, and never repeats itself
one ever varied sense beams novelty and unity on all.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#80. Have I done aught of value to my fellow-men? Then have I done much for myself.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#83. Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#85. When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge; love simple ones as you would the native roses on your cheek.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#86. 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
#91. Thinkers are scarce as gold; but he whose thoughts embrace all his subject, and who pursues it uninterruptedly and fearless of consequences, is a diamond of enormous size.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#92. Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#93. 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
#96. The less you can enjoy, the poorer, the scantier yourself,
the more you can enjoy, the richer, the more vigorous.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#97. Three days of uninterrupted company in a vehicle will make you better acquainted with another, than one hour's conversation with him every day for three years.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#100. Modesty is silent when it would be improper to speak; the humble, without being called upon, never recollects to say anything of himself.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
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