Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.

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

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

Who, in the midst of just provocation to anger, instantly finds the fit word which settles all around him in silence is more than wise or just; he is, were he a beggar, of more than royal blood, he is of celestial descent.

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.

The cruelty of the effeminate is more dreadful than that or the hardy.

The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint.

Fools learn nothing from wise men, but wise men learn much from fools.

Dress is an index of your contents.

There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

Truth, wisdom, love, seek reasons; malice only seeks causes.

The jealous are possessed by a mad devil and a dull spirit at the same time.

Who forces himself on others is to himself a load. Impetuous curiosity is empty and inconstant. Prying intrusion may be suspected of whatever is little.

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

True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment.

There is a manner of forgiveness so divine that you are ready to embrace the offender for having called it forth.

Who gives a trifle meanly is meaner than the trifle.

Neither refinement nor delicacy is indispensable to produce elegance.

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

Half talent is no talent.

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.

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.

You may tell a man thou art a fiend, but not your nose wants blowing; to him alone who can bear a thing of that kind, you may tell all.

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

The great rule of moral conduct is next to God, respect time.

The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million.