Nov 15, 1741 - Jan 2, 1801
Swiss writer, theologian and poet, wrote in German.
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Borrowed wit is the poorest wit.
Whatever obscurities may involve religious tenets, humility and love constitute the essence of true religion; the humble is formed to adore, the loving to associate with eternal love.
Good-humor is always a success.
Who gives a trifle meanly is meaner than the trifle.
A gift--its kind, its value and appearance; the silence or the pomp that attends it; the style in which it reaches you--may decide the dignity or vulgarity of the giver.
The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million.
It is possible that a wise and good man may be prevailed on to game; but it is impossible that a professed gamester should be a wise and good man.
There is a manner of forgiveness so divine that you are ready to embrace the offender for having called it forth.
Receive no satisfaction for premeditated impertinence; forget it, forgive it, but keep him inexorably at a distance who offered it.
Evasions are the common shelter of the hard-hearted, the false and impotent when called upon to assist; the really great alone plan instantaneous help, even when their looks or words presage difficulties.
Just so far as we are pleased at finding faults, are we displeased at finding perfection.
The less you can enjoy, the poorer, the scantier yourself,--the more you can enjoy, the richer, the more vigorous.
Neither refinement nor delicacy is indispensable to produce elegance.
Let the degree of egotism be the measure of confidence.
A fop of fashion is the mercer's friend, the tailor's fool, and his own foe.
Desire is the uneasiness a man finds in himself upon the absence of anything whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight with it.
He who prorogues the honesty of today till to-morrow will probably prorogue his to-morrows to eternity.
All finery is a sign of littleness.
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.
The cruelty of the effeminate is more dreadful than that or the hardy.
The creditor whose appearance gladdens the heart of a debtor may hold his head in sunbeams and his foot on storms.
Those who speak always and those who never speak are equally unfit for friendship. A food proportion of the talent of listening and speaking is the base of social virtues.
The conscience is more wise than science.
The more any one speaks of himself, the less he likes to hear another talked of.
The freer you feel yourself in the presence of another, the more free is he.
She whom smiles and tears make equally lovely may command all hearts.
His calumny is not only the greatest benefit a rogue can confer on us, but the only service he will perform for nothing.
Loudness is impotence.
He who comes from the kitchen, smells of its smoke; and he who adheres to a sect, has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student; and dry inhumanity him who herds with literary pedants.
The enemy of art is the enemy of nature; art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertions of human nature; and what nature will he honor who honors not the human?
