Who trades in contradictions will not be contradicted. Johann Kaspar Lavater More Quotes by Johann Kaspar Lavater More Quotes From Johann Kaspar Lavater 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. Johann Kaspar Lavater calm patient philosophy The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety. Johann Kaspar Lavater sanctity piety faces He who seeks to imbitter innocent pleasure has a cancer in his heart. Johann Kaspar Lavater innocent cancer heart Do not believe that a book is good, if in reading it thou dost not become more contented with thy existence, if it does not rouse up in thee most generous feelings. Johann Kaspar Lavater reading believe book The policy of adapting one's self to circumstances makes all ways smooth. Johann Kaspar Lavater smooth self way There are no friends more inseparable than pride and hardness of heart, humility and love, falsehood and impudence. Johann Kaspar Lavater pride humility heart Avoid connecting yourself with characters whose good and bad sides are unmixed and have not fermented together; they resemble vials of vinegar and oil; or palletts set with colors; they are either excellent at home and insufferable abroad, or intolerable within doors and excellent in public; they are unfit for friendship, merely because their stamina, their ingredients of character are too single, too much apart; let them be finely ground up with each other, and they are incomparable. Johann Kaspar Lavater home doors character Certain trifling flaws sit as disgracefully on a character of elegance as a ragged button on a court dress. Johann Kaspar Lavater buttons dresses character Joy and grief decide character. What exalts prosperity? what imbitters grief? what leaves us indifferent? what interests us? As the interest of man, so his God - as his God, so he. Johann Kaspar Lavater grief character men True love, like the eye, can bear no flaw. Johann Kaspar Lavater eye bears love 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. Johann Kaspar Lavater honesty self men He who, in questions of right, virtue, or duty, sets himself above all ridicule, is truly great, and shall laugh in the end with truer mirth than ever he was laughed at. Johann Kaspar Lavater mirth greatness laughing Copiousness and simplicity, variety and unity, constitute real greatness of character. Johann Kaspar Lavater greatness real character Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it; nor at any time in the extremes of it. Johann Kaspar Lavater extremes fashion long Dress is an index of your contents. Johann Kaspar Lavater dresses As you treat your body, so your house, your domestics, your enemies, your friends - Dress is a table of your contents. Johann Kaspar Lavater house advice enemy 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. Johann Kaspar Lavater curiosity may littles Avoid him who from mere curiosity asks three questions running about a thing that cannot interest Him. Johann Kaspar Lavater three curiosity running He who goes round about in his requests wants commonly more than he chooses to appear to want. Johann Kaspar Lavater request rounds want The prudent see only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprise; the hero sees both; diminishes the former and makes the latter preponderate, and so conquers. Johann Kaspar Lavater prudent hero mistake
