Top 200 Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

102. “Just so far as we are pleased at finding faults, are we displeased at finding perfection.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

103. “Who affects useless singularities has surely a little mind.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

105. “If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

106. “Who knows whence he comes, where he is, and whither he tends, he, and he alone, is wise.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

107. “The generous person is always just, and the just who is always generous may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

108. “The mingled incentives which lead to action are often too subtle and lie too deep for us to analyze.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

109. “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.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

110. “How few our real wants, and how vast our imaginary ones!”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

111. “He who comes from the kitchen, smells of its smoke; and he who adheres to a sect, has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student; and dry inhumanity him who herds with literary pedants.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

112. “He who always prefaces his tale with laughter, is poised between impertinence and folly.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

113. “What knowledge is there of which man is capable that is not founded on the exterior, – the relation that exists between visible and invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible?”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

114. “Who begins with severity, in judging of another, ends commonly with falsehood.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

116. “He also has energy who cannot be deprived of it.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

117. “The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

118. “He who has no taste for order, will be often wrong in his judgment, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

119. “Too much gravity argues a shallow mind.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

120. “What is the elevation of the soul? A prompt, delicate, certain feeling for all that is beautiful, all that is grand; a quick resolution to do the greatest good by the smallest means; a great benevolence joined to a great strength and great humility.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

121. “Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

122. “Learn the value of a man’s words and expressions, and you know him. Each man has a measure of his own for everything; this he offers you inadvertently in his words. He who has a superlative for everything wants a measure for the great or small.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

124. “The countenance is more eloquent than the tongue.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

125. “Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

126. “He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

127. “He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

128. “Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

129. “All finery is a sign of littleness.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

131. “As man’s love or hatred, so he. Love and hatred exist only personified.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

132. “He who freely praises what he means to purchase, and he who enumerates the faults of what he means to sell, may set up a partnership with honesty.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

133. “Loudness is impotence.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

134. “The ambitious sacrifices all to what he terms honor, as the miser all to money.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

135. “The man who loves with his whole heart truth will love still more he who suffers for truth.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

136. “Who forces himself on others is to himself a load. Impetuous curiosity is empty and inconstant. Prying intrusion may be suspected of whatever is little.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

137. “There is no mortal truly wise and restless at once; wisdom is the repose of minds.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

138. “Words are the wings of actions.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

139. “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.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

140. “The less you can enjoy, the poorer, the scantier yourself, – the more you can enjoy, the richer, the more vigorous.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

141. “Let the degree of egotism be the measure of confidence.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

142. “And still, laughter is akin to weeping.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

143. “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.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

144. “Who trades in contradictions will not be contradicted.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

145. “She whom smiles and tears make equally lovely may command all hearts.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

147. “Where consequence ceases, there folly, restlessness and misery begin.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

148. “Copiousness and simplicity, variety and unity, constitute real greatness of character.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

149. “Wisdom is the repose of the mind.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

150. “Injustice arises either from precipitation, or indolence, or from a mixture of both. – The rapid and slow are seldom just; the unjust wait either not at all, or wait too long.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater