Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes - Page 9

Weaknesses, so called, are nothing more nor less than vice in disguise!

Who will sacrifice nothing, and enjoy all, is a fool.

He who goes round about in his requests wants commonly more than he chooses to appear to want.

The creditor whose appearance gladdens the heart of a debtor may hold his head in sunbeams and his foot on storms.

You can depend on no man, on no friend, but him who can depend on himself.

Desire is the uneasiness a man finds in himself upon the absence of anything whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight with it.

As the interest of man, so his God - as his God, so he.

Borrowed wit is the poorest wit.

Whatever obscurities may involve religious tenets, humility and love constitute the essence of true religion; the humble is formed to adore, the loving to associate with eternal love.

Good-humor is always a success.

Certain trifling flaws sit as disgracefully on a character of elegance as a ragged button on a court dress.

Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it; nor at any time in the extremes of it.

Dress is an index of your contents.

The miser robs himself.

The wrath that on conviction subsides into mildness, is the wrath of a generous mind.

Half talent is no talent.

The enemy of art is the enemy of nature; art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertion of human nature; and what nature will he honour who honours not the human?

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.

The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety.

The immoderate cannot laugh moderately.

The policy of adapting one's self to circumstances makes all ways smooth.

The smiles that encourage severity of judgment hide malice and insincerity.

He who reforms himself has done more towards reforming the public than a crowd or noisy, impotent patriots.

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 freer you feel yourself in the presence of another, the more free is he...