Johann Kaspar Lavater
18 quotes.
Quotes by Johann Kaspar Lavater
- Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.
- Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character.
- Airs of importance are the credentials of impotence.
- Every day should be distinguished by at least one particular act of love.
- He surely is most in need of another’s patience, who has none of his own.
- He who gives himself airs of importance exhibits the credentials of impotence.
- He who has not forgiven an enemy has never yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life.
- He who reforms himself, has done more toward reforming the public, than a crowd of noisy, impotent patriots.
- 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 conversation.
- How few our real wants, and how vast our imaginary ones!
- If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already.
- Speak no evil of a man if you know it not of him for certain, and if you do know it, then ask yourself, "Why do I tell it?
- The manner of giving shows the character of the giver, more than the gift itself.
- The prudent see only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprize; the hero sees both; diminishes the former and makes the latter preponderate, and so conquers.
- There are but three classes of men, the retrograde, the stationary, and the progressive.
- Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.
- You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.
- You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are decidedly bad.