Johann Kaspar Lavater
The immoderate cannot laugh moderately.Collection: Laughter
He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent; still less how to act with vigour and decision. - Who hastens to the end is silent: loudness is impotence.Collection: Silence
A great passion has no partner.Collection: Passion
Calmness of will is a sign of grandeur.Collection: Calmness
Who begins with severity, in judging of another, ends commonly with falsehood.Collection: Judging
He who has no taste for order, will be often wrong in his judgment, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions.Collection: Order
Loudness is impotence.Collection: Impotence
Conscience is wiser than science.Collection: Wisdom
He who, silent, loves to be with us - he who loves us in our silence - has touched one of the keys that ravish hearts.Collection: Heart
Happy the heart to whom God has given enough strength and courage to suffer for Him, to find happiness in simplicity and the happiness of others.Collection: Heart
The loss of taste for what is right is loss of all right taste.Collection: Loss
Who despises all that is despicable is made to be impressed with all that is grand.Collection: Made
Who gives is positive; who receives is negative; still there remains an immense class of mere passives.Collection: Class
He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity.Collection: Sacrifice
It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, mien, inventions and actions of others.Collection: Decision
Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities.Collection: Inspire
And still, laughter is akin to weeping.Collection: Laughter
She whom smiles and tears make equally lovely may command all hearts.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Smart
There is a manner of forgiveness so divine that you are ready to embrace the offender for having called it forth.Collection: Forgiveness
It is possible that a wise and good man may be prevailed on to game; but it is impossiā£ble that a professed gamester should be a wise and good man.Collection: Wise
Who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation will be so before the eye of all the world.Collection: Eye
The procrastinator is not only indolent and weak, but commonly, false, too; most of the weak are false.Collection: Procrastination
Kiss the hand of him who can renounce what he has publicly taught when convicted of his error, and who, with heartfelt joy, embraces truth, though with the sacrifice of favourite opinions.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Lying
The greatest of characters, no doubt, would be he, who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium, always at hand, and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every object in its true shape and colour through all the fluctuation of things.Collection: Truth
He can feel no little wants who is in pursuit of grandeur.Collection: Want
He who purposely cheats his friend would cheat his God.Collection: Friendship
When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge; love simple ones as you would the native roses on your cheek.Collection: Love
All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear richCollection: Poverty
He whom common, gross, or stale objects allure, and when obtained, content, is a vulgar being, incapable of greatness in thought or action.Collection: Greatness
He who reforms himself has done more towards reforming the public than a crowd or noisy, impotent patriots.Collection: Reform
Not every one who has the gift of speech understands the value of silence.Collection: Silence
The mingled incentives which lead to action are often too subtle and lie too deep for us to analyze.Collection: Lying
The freer you feel yourself in the presence of another, the more free is he...Collection: Feels
He who goes round about in his requests wants commonly more than he chooses to appear to want.Collection: Want
Those who speak always and those who never speak are equally unfit for friendship. A food proportion of the talent of listening and speaking is the base of social virtues.Collection: Listening
The creditor whose appearance gladdens the heart of a debtor may hold his head in sunbeams and his foot on storms.Collection: Heart
The policy of adapting one's self to circumstances makes all ways smooth.Collection: Self
Good-humor is always a success.Collection: Good Humor
The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety.Collection: Faces
True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment.Collection: Philosophy
Borrowed wit is the poorest wit.Collection: Imitation
As the interest of man, so his God - as his God, so he.Collection: Men
Half talent is no talent.Collection: Mediocrity
You can depend on no man, on no friend, but him who can depend on himself.Collection: Men
The enemy of art is the enemy of nature; art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertion of human nature; and what nature will he honour who honours not the human?Collection: Art
Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it; nor at any time in the extremes of it.Collection: Fashion
The craftiest trickery are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart.Collection: Heart