Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes - Page 2

Who is open without levity; generous without waste; secret without craft; humble without meanness; bold without insolence; cautious without anxiety; regular, yet not formal; mild, yet not timid; firm, yet not tyrannical - is made to pass the ordeal of honour, friendship, virtue.

Airs of importance are the credentials of impotence.

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

Every man has his devilish minutes.

Thousands are hated, while none are loved without a real cause

Malice is poisoned by her own venom.

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

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

Depend on no man, on no friend but him who can depend on himself. He only who acts conscientiously toward himself, will act so toward others.

Whenever a man undergoes a considerable change, in consequence of being observed by others, whenever he assumes another gait, another language, than what he had before he thought himself observed, be advised to guard yourself against him.

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

A sneer is often the sign of heartless malignity.

Defeat serves to enlighten us.

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

Softness of smile indicates softness of character.

To realize that you were mistaken, is just the acknowledgement , that you are wiser today than you were yesterday.

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.

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.

True worth is as inevitably discovered by the facial expression, as its opposite is sure to be clearly represented there. The human face is nature's tablet, the truth is certainly written thereon.

The acquisition of will, for one thing exclusively, presupposes entire acquaintance with many others.

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.

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.

Venerate four characters: the sanguine who has checked volatility and the rage for pleasure; the choleric who has subdued passion and pride; the phlegmatic emerged from indolence; and the melancholy who has dismissed avarice, suspicion and asperity.

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.

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.