Top 200 Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 3 of 5

101. “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.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

104. “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

105. “Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

108. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

111. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

113. “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

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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

119. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

121. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

123. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

125. “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

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. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

129. “Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

130. “Loudness is impotence.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

134. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

136. “Words are the wings of actions.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

138. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

140. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

146. “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

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

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

148. “The quicker, the louder, the applause with which another tries to gain you over to his purpose – the bitterer his censure if he miss his aim.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

149. “The cruelty of the effeminate is more dreadful than that or the hardy.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

150. “The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.”

— Johann Kaspar Lavater