Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes
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.
There is a manner of forgiveness so divine that you are ready to embrace the offender for having called it forth.
Trust him with none of thy individualities who is, or pretends to be, two things at once.
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.
Who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation will be so before the eye of all the world.
Who knows whence he comes, where he is, and whither he tends, he, and he alone, is wise.
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.
As you treat your body, so your house, your domestics, your enemies, your friends - Dress is a table of your contents.
Modesty is silent when it would be improper to speak; the humble, without being called upon, never recollects to say anything of himself.
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.
True genius repeats itself forever, and never repeats itself--one ever varied sense beams novelty and unity on all.
Those who speak always and those who never speak are equally unfit for friendship. A food proportion of the talent of listening and speaking is the base of social virtues.
The more unharmonious and inconsistent your objects of desire, the more inconsequent, inconstant, unquiet, the more ignoble, idiotical, and criminal yourself.
Who gives is positive; who receives is negative; still there remains an immense class of mere passives.
The ambitious sacrifices all to what he terms honor, as the miser all to money.
There is no mortal truly wise and restless at once; wisdom is the repose of minds.
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.
The freer you feel yourself in the presence of another, the more free is he...
A single spark of occasion discharges the child of passions into a thousand crackers of desire.
Take here the grand secret; if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none, and court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion.
To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.
The man who loves with his whole heart truth will love still more he who suffers for truth.
It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, mien, inventions and actions of others.
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.
He who, silent, loves to be with us - he who loves us in our silence - has touched one of the keys that ravish hearts.
