Top 60 Johann Georg Zimmermann Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

2. “Who conquers indolence conquers all other hereditary sins.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

3. “Many have been ruined by their fortunes, and many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it the great have become little, and the little great.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

4. “Take care to be an economist in prosperity. There is no fear of your being one in adversity.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

5. “Thought and action are the redeeming features of our lives.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

6. “Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

7. “A moral lesson is better expressed in short sayings than in long discourse.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

8. “In the sallies of badinage a polite fool shines; but in gravity he is as awkward as an elephant disporting.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

9. “Fools with bookish knowledge art children with edged weapons; they hurt themselves, and put others in pain.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

10. “Never lose sight of this important truth, that no one can be truly great until he has gained a knowledge of himself, a knowledge which can only be acquired by occasional retirement.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

11. “Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

12. “A good name will wear out; a bad one may be turned; a nickname lasts forever.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

13. “There appears to exist a greater desire to live long than to live well! Measure by man’s desires, he cannot live long enough; measure by his good deeds, and he has not lived long enough; measure by his evil deeds, and he has lived too long.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

14. “Hunger is the mother of impatience and anger.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

15. “Truth lies in a small compass! The Aristotelians say, all truth is contained in Aristotle, in one place or another. Galileo makes Simplicius say so, but shows the absurdity of that speech by answering all truth is contained in a lesser compass, namely, in the alphabet.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

16. “In fame’s temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

17. “Indolent people, whatever taste they may have for society, seek eagerly for pleasure, and find nothing. They have an empty head and seared hearts.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

18. “One ought to love society, if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

19. “Family pride entertains many unsocial opinions.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

20. “Nobility should be elective, not hereditary.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

21. “Surmise is the gossamer that malice blows on fair reputations, the corroding dew that destroys the choice blossom. Surmise is primarily the squint of suspicion, and suspicion is established before it is confirmed.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

22. “Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

23. “We never read without profit if with the pen or pencil in our hand we mark such ideas as strike us by their novelty, or correct those we already possess.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

24. “By fools, knaves fatten; by bigots, priests are well clothed; every knave finds a gull.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

25. “The sluggard is a living insensible.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

26. “The ill usage of every minute is a new record against us in heaven.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

27. “An everlasting tranquility is, in my imagination, the highest possible felicity, because I know of no felicity on earth higher than that which a peaceful mind and contented heart afford.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

28. “When we meet with better fare than was expected, the disappointment is overlooked even by the unscrupulous. When we meet with worse than was expected, philosophers alone know how to make it better.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

29. “There are few mortals so insensible that their affections cannot he gained by mildness, their confidence by sincerity, their hatred by scorn or neglect.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

30. “All our distinctions ire accidental; beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise nor censure; yet it so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached responsibility.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

31. “Sloth is the torpidity of the mental faculties; the sluggard is a living insensible.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

32. “The necessities that exist are in general created by the superfluities that are enjoyed.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

33. “Novels do not force their fair readers to sin, they only instruct them how to sin; the consequences of which are fully detailed, and not in a way calculated to seduce any but weak but weak minds; few of their heroines are happily disposed of.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

34. “Contempt is frequently regulated by fashion.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

35. “The quarter of an hour before dinner is the worst that suitors can choose.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

36. “Liberal of cruelty are those who pamper with promises; promisers destroy while they deceive, and the hope they raise is dearly purchased by the dependence that is sequent to disappointment.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

37. “Books afford the surest relief in the most melancholy moments.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

38. “Gambling houses are temples where the most sordid and turbulent passions contend; there no spectator can be indifferent. A card or a small square of ivory interests more than the loss of an empire, or the ruin of an unoffending group of infants, and their nearest relatives.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

39. “Troops of furies march in the drunkard’s triumph.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

40. “When ill news comes too late to be serviceable to your neighbor, keep it to yourself.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

41. “Though fancy may be the patient’s complaint, necessity is often the doctor’s.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

42. “Economy is an excellent lure to betray people into expense.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

43. “When soured by disappointment we must endeavor to pursue some fixed and pleasing course of study, that there may be no blank leaf in our book of life. Painful and disagreeable ideas vanish from the mind that can fix its attention upon any subject.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

44. “Those beings only are fit for solitude who are like nobody, and are liked by nobody.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

45. “Unless the habit leads to happiness the best habit is to contract none.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

46. “Age is suspicious but is not itself often suspected.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

47. “Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

48. “The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

49. “The purse of the patient often protracts his case.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann

50. “Many species of wit are quite mechanical; these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies.”

— Johann Georg Zimmermann