Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes - Page 6

The public seldom forgive twice.

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.

Existence is self-enjoyment, by means of some object distinct from ourselves.

The procrastinator is not only indolent and weak, but commonly, false, too; most of the weak are false.

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.

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.

Wisdom is the repose of the mind.

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.

Trust him with none of thy individualities who is, or pretends to be, two things at once.

Neither refinement nor delicacy is indispensable to produce elegance.

Who trades in contradictions will not be contradicted.

He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.

Wishes run over in loquacious impotence, will presses on with laconic energy.

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

Trust him little who praise all, him less who censures all and him least who is indifferent about all.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

The more any one speaks of himself, the less he likes to hear another talked of.

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

Who gives a trifle meanly is meaner than the trifle.

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.

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.

He surely is most in need of another's patience, who has none of his own.

Too much gravity argues a shallow mind.

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.