277 Quotes by Johann Kaspar Lavater

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.

Nothing is so pregnant as cruelty; so multifarious, so rapid, so ever teeming a mother is unknown to the animal kingdom; each of her experiments provokes another and refines upon the last; though always progressive, yet always remote from the end.

If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.

The cruelty of the effeminate is more dreadful than that or the hardy.

Existence is self-enjoyment, by means of some object distinct from ourselves.

The creditor whose appearance gladdens the heart of a debtor may hold his head in sunbeams and his foot on storms.

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.

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.

As man's love or hatred, so he. Love and hatred exist only personified.