Best 199 quotes of Johann Kaspar Lavater on MyQuotes

He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity.

He who can conceal his joys, is greater than he who can hide his griefs

He, who cannot forgive a trespass of malice to his enemy, has never yet tasted the most sublime enjoyment of love.

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.

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.

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

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.

He who is passionate and hasty is generally honest. It is your cool, dissembling hypocrite of whom you should beware.

He whom common, gross, or stale objects allure, and when obtained, content, is a vulgar being, incapable of greatness in thought or action.

He who prorogues the honesty of today till to-morrow will probably prorogue his to-morrows to eternity.

He who purposely cheats his friend would cheat his God.

He who reforms himself has done more towards reforming the public than a crowd or noisy, impotent patriots.

He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers and ceases when he has no more to say is in possession of some of the best requisites of man

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

He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.

He whose pride oppresses the humble may perhaps be humbled, but will never be humble.

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

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.

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

How few our real wants, and how vast our imaginary ones!

Humility with energy is often mistaken for pride.

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.

If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.

If you see one cold and vehement at the same time, set him down for a fanatic.

If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you already know.

Indiscretion, rashness, falsehood, levity, and malice, produce each other.

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.

Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.

It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, mien, inventions and actions of others.

It is one of my favorite thoughts that God manifests Himself to men in all the wise, good, humble, generous, great, and magnanimous men.

It is possible that a wise and good man may be prevailed on to game; but it is impossi∣ble that a professed gamester should be a wise and good man.

Joy and grief decide character. What exalts prosperity? what imbitters grief? what leaves us indifferent? what interests us? As the interest of man, so his God - as his God, so he.

Just so far as we are pleased at finding faults, are we displeased at finding perfection.

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

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

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.

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

Malice is poisoned by her own venom.

Man is forever the same; the same under every form, in all situations and relations that admit of free and unrestrained exertion. The same regard which you have for yourself, you have for others, for nature, for the invisible ... which you call God.

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.

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.

Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil and still more the man who is indifferent to everything.

Modesty is silent when it would be improper to speak; the humble, without being called upon, never recollects to say anything of himself.

Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship.

Neither refinement nor delicacy is indispensable to produce elegance.

No communication or gift can exhaust genius or impoverish charity.

Not every one who has the gift of speech understands the value of silence.

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.

Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. Firmness founded upon principle, upon the truth and right, order and law, duty and generosity, is the obstinacy of sages.

Receive no satisfaction for premeditated impertinence - forget it, forgive it - but keep him inexorably at a distance who of∣fered it.