Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.

The enemy of art is the enemy of nature. Art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertion of human nature; and what nature will he honour who honours not the human?

Just as you are pleased at finding faults you are displeased at finding perfections.

Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell characters.

He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity.

He that has no friend and no enemy is one of the vulgar, and without talents, power, or energy.

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

The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million; but genius without tyranny, without pretension, that judges the weak with equity, the superior with humanity, and equals with justice, is like one to ten millions.

Genius always gives its best at first, prudence at last.

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.

He only is great who has the habits of greatness; who, after performing what none in ten thousand could accomplish, passes on, like Samson, and tells neither father nor mother of it.

Everything may be mimicked by hypocrisy but humility and love united. The humblest star twinkles most in the darkest night. The more rare humility and love united, the more radiant when they meet.

It is the summit of humility to bear the imputation of pride.

Injustice arises either from precipitation or indolence, or from a mixture of both. The rapid and the slow are seldom just; the unjust wait either not at all, or wait too long.

He surely is most in want of another’s patience who has none of his own.

The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint. The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety.

Believe me, I speak it deliberately and with full conviction: I have enjoyed many of the comforts of life, none of which I wish to esteem lightly: often have I been charmed with the beauties of nature, and refreshed with her bountiful gifts. I have spent many an hour in sweet meditation, and in reading the most valuable productions of the wisest men. I have often been delighted with the conversation of ingenious, sensible, and exalted characters: my eyes have been powerfully attracted by the finest productions of human art, and my ears by enchanting melodies. I have found pleasure when calling into activity the powers of my own mind; when residing in my own native land, or travelling through foreign parts; when surrounded by large and splendid companies—still more when moving in the small endearing circle of my own family: yet, to speak the truth before God, who is my Judge, I must confess I know not any joy that is so dear to me; that so fully satisfies the inmost desires of my mind; that so enlivens, refines, and elevates my whole nature, as that which I derive from religion, from faith in God: as one who not only is the parent of men, but has condescended, as a brother, to clothe Himself with our nature. Nothing affords me greater delight than a solid hope that I partake of His favours, and rely on His never-failing support and protection…. He who has been so often my hope, my refuge, my confidence, when I stood upon the brink of an abyss where I could not move one step forward; He who, in answer to my prayer, has helped me when every prospect of help vanished; that God who has safely conducted me, not merely through flowery paths, but likewise across precipices and burning sands;—may this God be thy God, thy comfort, as He has been mine!

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.