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Quotes from Forty Thousand Quotations — Johann Kaspar Lavater

1741–1801 Switzerland

← All quotes by Johann Kaspar Lavater

160 quotes

What do I owe to my times, to my country, to my neighbors, to my friends? Such are the questions which a virtuous man ought to ask himself often.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

A gift—its kind, its value and appearance; the silence or the pomp that attends it; the style in which it reaches you—may decide the dignity or vulgarity of the giver.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

As a man’s salutation, so is the total of his character; in nothing do we lay ourselves so open as in our manner of meeting and salutation.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Calmness of will is a sign of grandeur. The vulgar, far from hiding their will, blab their wishes. A single spark of occasion discharges the child of passions into a thousand crackers of desire.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Every man has his devilish minutes.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

He only is great who has the habits of greatness; who, after performing what none in ten thousand could accomplish, passes on like Samson, and “tells neither father nor mother of it.”

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Thinkers are scarce as gold; but he whose thoughts embrace all his subject, and who pursues it uninterruptedly and fearless of consequences, is a diamond of enormous size.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Wisdom is the repose of the mind.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Faces are as legible as books, only with these circumstances to recommend them to our perusal, that they are read in much less time, and are much less likely to deceive us.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Sensibility is the power of woman.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

The worst of faces still is human.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Where pride begins, love ceases.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

A great passion has no partner.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

All finery is a sign of littleness.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

And still, laughter is akin to weeping.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Borrowed wit is the poorest wit.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Defeat serves to enlighten us.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Dress is an index of your contents.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Attribution

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