Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

Who cuts is easily wounded. The readier you are to offend the sooner you are offended.

The manner of giving shows the character of the giver, more than the gift itself.

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

Avoid the eye that discovers with rapidity the bad, and is slow to see the good.

To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.

Who makes quick use of the moment is a genius of prudence.

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

Three things characterize man: person, fate, merit--the harmony of these constitutes real grandeur.

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

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

The countenance is more eloquent than the tongue.

There are no friends more inseparable than pride and hardness of heart, humility and love, falsehood and impudence.

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

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?

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

As you treat your body, so your house, your domestics, your enemies, your friends - Dress is a table of your contents.

Women are proverbially credulous.

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.

The conscience is more wise than science.

The discovery of truth, by slow progressive meditation, is wisdom. - Intuition of truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius.

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

He also has energy who cannot be deprived of it.

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

You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are decidedly bad.

A beautiful smile is to the female countenance what the sunbeam is to the landscape; it embellishes an inferior face and redeems an ugly one.