Johann Kaspar Lavater
Take here the grand secret; if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none, and court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion.Collection: Fashion
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.Collection: Curiosity
Certain trifling flaws sit as disgracefully on a character of elegance as a ragged button on a court dress.Collection: Character
Who will sacrifice nothing, and enjoy all, is a fool.Collection: Sacrifice
Dress is an index of your contents.Collection: Dresses
The smiles that encourage severity of judgment hide malice and insincerity.Collection: Judgment
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.Collection: Religious
He scatters enjoyment who can enjoy much.Collection: Enjoy
The worst of all knaves are those who can mimic their former honesty.Collection: Honesty
As your enemies and your friends, so are youCollection: Character
Close thine ear against him that shall open his mouth secretly against another. If thou receivest not his words, they fly back and wound the reporter. If thou dost receive them, they fly forward and wound the receiver.Collection: Ears
He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself.Collection: Oratory
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.Collection: Long
The worst of faces still is human.Collection: Love
The man who loves with his whole heart truth will love still more he who suffers for truth.Collection: Truth
Stubbornness is the strength of the weak.Collection: Weak
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.Collection: Men
He who always seeks more light the more he finds, and finds more the more he seeks, is one of the few happy mortals who take and give in every point of time. The tide and ebb of giving and receiving is the sum of human happiness, which he alone enjoys who always wishes to acquire new knowledge, and always finds it.Collection: Light
Thinkers are as scarce as gold.Collection: Gold
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.Collection: Honesty
The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint.Collection: Honesty
The generous person is always just, and the just who is always generous may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.Collection: Generosity
The more uniform a man's voice, step, manner of conversation, handwriting--the more quiet, uniform, settled, his actions, his character.Collection: Character
She neglects her heart who too closely studies her glass.Collection: Heart
An entirely honest man, in the severe sense of the word, exists no more than an entirely dishonest knave: the best and the worst are only approximations of those qualities. Who are those that never contradict themselves? yet honesty never contradicts itself: Who are those that always contradict themselves? yet knavery is mere self-contradiction. Thus the knowledge of man determines not the things themselves, but their proportions, the quan∣tum of congruities and incongruities.Collection: Honesty
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.Collection: Beautiful
Words are the wings of actions.Collection: Wings
The horse-laugh indicates brutality of character.Collection: Horse
Avoid him who from mere curiosity asks three questions running about a thing that cannot interest Him.Collection: Running
He who always prefaces his tale with laughter, is poised between impertinence and folly.Collection: Laughter
Vociferation and calmness of character seldom meet in the same person.Collection: Character
Every man has his devilish minutes.Collection: Men
Where consequence ceases, there folly, restlessness and misery begin.Collection: Misery
In the society of ladies, want of sense is not so unpardonable as want of manners.Collection: Want
The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy.Collection: Passion
True genius repeats itself forever, and never repeats itself--one ever varied sense beams novelty and unity on all.Collection: Forever
True love, like the eye, can bear no flaw.Collection: Love
Who values gold above all, considers all else as trifling.Collection: Gold
No communication or gift can exhaust genius or impoverish charity.Collection: Communication
Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium.Collection: World
Copiousness and simplicity, variety and unity, constitute real greatness of character.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Men
How few our real wants, and how vast our imaginary ones!Collection: Real
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.Collection: College
Vanity and rudeness are seldom seen together.Collection: Vanity
Indiscretion, rashness, falsehood, levity, and malice, produce each other.Collection: Levity
He who prorogues the honesty of today till to-morrow will probably prorogue his to-morrows to eternity.Collection: Honesty
Just so far as we are pleased at finding faults, are we displeased at finding perfection.Collection: Envy
His calumny is not only the greatest benefit a rogue can confer on us, but the only service he will perform for nothing.Collection: Calumny Is