Famous Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes
“Trust not him with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.”
No. 449
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)
As quoted in What Billingsgate Thought: A Country Gentleman's Views on Snobbery (1919) by William Alexander Newman Dorland
“Say not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him.”
No. 157
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)
“Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of God, who sees him not in man.”
No. 398
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)
“Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.”
No. 305
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)
Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes
“Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed:”
As quoted in Mental Recreation; or, Select Maxims (1831), p. 234
Context: Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed: nature never pretends.
“Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?”
No. 260
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)
“The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint.”
As quoted in Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1862) edited by Henry Southgate, p. 290
“Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 4
“If you see one cold and vehement at the same time, set him down for a fanatic.”
No. 282
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 246
No. 609
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)
“There are but three classes of men — the retrograde, the stationary, the progressive.”
No. 371
Aphorisms on Man (1788)
“Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell characters.”
No. 637
Aphorisms on Man (1788)
“You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.”
No. 536
Aphorisms on Man (1788)
“The jealous is possessed by a "fine mad devil" and a dull spirit at once.”
No. 345
In William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5, sc. 1, Falstaff says that Mistress Ford's husband has "the finest mad devil of jealousy in him".
Aphorisms on Man (1788)
