Best 199 quotes of Johann Kaspar Lavater on MyQuotes

Johann Kaspar Lavater

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    A fop of fashion is the mercer's friend, the tailor's fool, and his own foe.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    A gift--its kind, its value and appearance; the silence or the pomp that attends it; the style in which it reaches you--may decide the dignity or vulgarity of the giver.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Airs of importance are the credentials of impotence.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    All belief that does not make us more happy, more free, more loving, more active, more calm, is, I fear, a mistaken and superstitious belief.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    And still, laughter is akin to weeping.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    An entirely honest man, in the severe sense of the word, exists no more than an entirely dishonest knave: the best and the worst are only approximations of those qualities. Who are those that never contradict themselves? yet honesty never contradicts itself: Who are those that always contradict themselves? yet knavery is mere self-contradiction. Thus the knowledge of man determines not the things themselves, but their proportions, the quan∣tum of congruities and incongruities.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    As a man's salutations, so is the total of his character; in nothing do we lay ourselves so open as in our manner of meeting and salutation.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    A sneer is often the sign of heartless malignity.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Avoid connecting yourself with characters whose good and bad sides are unmixed and have not fermented together; they resemble vials of vinegar and oil; or palletts set with colors; they are either excellent at home and insufferable abroad, or intolerable within doors and excellent in public; they are unfit for friendship, merely because their stamina, their ingredients of character are too single, too much apart; let them be finely ground up with each other, and they are incomparable.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Avoid him who from mere curiosity asks three questions running about a thing that cannot interest Him.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

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    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.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it; nor at any time in the extremes of it.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Borrowed wit is the poorest wit.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Calmness of will is a sign of grandeur.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Conscience is wiser than science.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Decided ends are sure signs of a decided character.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Defeat serves to enlighten us.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Desire is the uneasiness a man finds in himself upon the absence of anything whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight with it.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    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.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    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?

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Dread more the blunderer's friendship than the calumniator's enmity.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    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.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    God protects those he loves from worthless reading.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Habit is altogether too arbitrary a master for me to submit to.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Half talent is no talent.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    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.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Have I done aught of value to my fellow-men? Then have I done much for myself.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    He also has energy who cannot be deprived of it.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    He can feel no little wants who is in pursuit of grandeur.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    He is incapable of a truly good action who finds not a pleasure in contemplating the good actions of others.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent; still less how to act with vigour and decision. - Who hastens to the end is silent: loudness is impotence.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    He scatters enjoyment who can enjoy much.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.

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    Johann Kaspar Lavater

    He who always prefaces his tale with laughter, is poised between impertinence and folly.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.