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Quotes from Forty Thousand Quotations — Johann Kaspar Lavater

1741–1801 Switzerland

← All quotes by Johann Kaspar Lavater

160 quotes

Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. Firmness founded upon principle, upon the truth and right, order and law, duty and generosity, is the obstinacy of sages.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Say not you know another, until you have divided an inheritance with him.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

How few our real wants, and how vast our imaginary ones!

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

It is possible that a wise and good man may be prevailed on to game; but it is impossible that a professed gamester should be a wise and good man.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

The friend of order has made half his way to virtue.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

The proverbial wisdom of the populace at gates, on roads, and in markets instructs the attentive ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously arranged.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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?

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

As you treat your body, so your house, your domestics, your enemies, your friends. Dress is a table of your contents.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent; still less how to act with vigor and decision. Who hastens to the end is silent; loudness is impotence.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

He who is passionate and hasty is generally honest. It is your cool, dissembling hypocrite of whom you should beware.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Good-humor is always a success.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers, and ceases when he has no more to say, is in possession of some of the best requisites of man.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Man without religion is a diseased creature, who would persuade himself he is well and needs not a physician; but woman without religion is raging and monstrous.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Who in the same given time can produce more than many others, has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Have I done aught of value to my fellow-men? Then have I done much for myself.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Johann Kaspar Lavater (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.