Johann Kaspar Lavater

You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are decidedly bad.

The great rule of moral conduct is next to God, respect time.

Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?

Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.

He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.

There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.

Depend on no man, on no friend but him who can depend on himself. He only who acts conscientiously toward himself, will act so toward others.

Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.

Don't speak evil of someone if you don't know for certain, and if you do know ask yourself, why am I telling it?

Mistrust the person who finds everything good, and the person who finds everything evil, and mistrust even more the person who is indifferent to everything.

He submits to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.

He, who cannot forgive a trespass of malice to his enemy, has never yet tasted the most sublime enjoyment of love.

You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.

If you see one cold and vehement at the same time, set him down for a fanatic.

Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character.

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.

Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.

What do I owe to my times, to my country, to my neighbors, to my friends? Such are the questions which a virtuous man ought often to ask himself.

Say not you know another entirely till you have divided an inheritance with him.