Johann Kaspar Lavater
Johann Kaspar Lavater
Johann KasparLavaterwas a Swiss poet, writer, philosopher, physiognomist and theologian...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth15 November 1741
CountryGermany
All finery is a sign of littleness.
heart vanity glasses
She neglects her heart who too closely studies her glass.
mother animal cuckoos
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.
cruelty hardy
The cruelty of the effeminate is more dreadful than that or the hardy.
heart feet storm
The creditor whose appearance gladdens the heart of a debtor may hold his head in sunbeams and his foot on storms.
real want imaginary
How few our real wants, and how vast our imaginary ones!
character passion pride
Venerate four characters: the sanguine who has checked volatility and the rage for pleasure; the choleric who has subdued passion and pride; the phlegmatic emerged from indolence; and the melancholy who has dismissed avarice, suspicion and asperity.
heart simplicity suffering
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.
men no-friends depends
You can depend on no man, on no friend, but him who can depend on himself.
friendship enmity dread
Dread more the blunderer's friendship than the calumniator's enmity.
Who has witnessed one free and unconstrained act of yours, has witnessed all.
men expression want
Learn the value of a man's words and expressions, and you know him. Each man has a measure of his own for everything; this he offers you inadvertently in his words. He who has a superlative for everything wants a measure for the great or small.
real fate men
Three things characterize man: person, fate, merit--the harmony of these constitutes real grandeur.
light giving wish
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.