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ZIMMERMAN, Johann Georg Quotes
(1728-1795), Swiss physicist
Pride in boasting of family antiquity, makes duration stand for merit.
Beauty is often worse than wine; intoxicating both the holder and beholder.
Open your mouth and purse cautiously, and your stock of wealth and reputation shall, at least in repute, be great.
Conceit and confidence are both of them cheats.—The first always imposes on itself; the second frequently deceives others.
That happy state of mind, so rarely possessed, in which we can say, "I have enough," is the highest attainment of philosophy. Happiness consists, not in possessing much, but in being content with what we possess. He who wants little always has enough.
There are few tables where convivial talents will not pass in payment, especially where the host wants brains, or the guest has
money.
Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.
Open your mouth and purse cautiously, and your stock of wealth and reputation shall, at least in repute, be great.
Dissipation is absolutely a labor when the round of Vanity fair has been once made; but fashion makes us think lightly of the toil, and we describe the circle as mechanically as a horse in a mill.
All our distinctions are accidental.—Beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise or censure; yet it so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached importance.
Beauty gains little, and homeliness and deformity lose much by gaudy attire.
Troops of furies march in the drunkard's triumph.
Take care to be an economist in prosperity; there is no fear of your not being one in adversity.
The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie.
Egotism is more like an offence than a crime, though 'tis allowable to speak of yourself provided nothing is advanced in your own favor; but I cannot help suspecting that those who abuse themselves are, in reality, angling for approbation.
In fame's temple there is always to be found a niche for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race.
Fools with bookish knowledge, are children with edged weapons, they hurt themselves, and put others in pain.—The half-leamed is more dangerous than the simpleton.
Many have been ruined by their fortunes, and many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune.—To obtain it the great have become little, and the little great.
Gambling houses are temples where the most sordid and turbulent passions contend; there no spectator can be indifferent. A card or a small square of ivory interests more than the loss of an empire, or the ruin of an unoffending group of infants and their nearest relatives.
News-hunters have great leisure, with little thought; much petty ambition to be thought intelligent, without any other pretension than being able to communicate what they have just learned.
Humility is the first lesson we learn from reflection, and self-distrust the first proof we give of having obtained a knowledge of ourselves.
They that do nothing are in the readiest way to do that which is worse than nothing.
If you ask me which is the real hereditary sin of human nature, do you imagine I shall answer pride, or luxury, or ambition, or egotism? No; I shall say indolence. Who conquers indolence will conquer all the rest. Indeed all good principles must stagnate without mental activity.
By fools knaves fatten; every knave finds a gull.
There appears to exist a greater desire to live long than to live well! Measure by man's desires, he cannot live long enough; measure by his good deeds, and he has not lived long enough; measure by his evil deeds, and he has lived too long.
With the vulgar and the learned, names have great weight; the wise use a writ of inquiry into their legitimacy when they are advanced as authorities.
When ill news comes too late to be serviceable to your neighbor, keep it to yourself.
A good name will wear out; a bad one may be turned; a nickname lasts forever.
Nobility should be elective, not hereditary.
Novels do not force their readers to sin, but only instruct them how to sin.
We protract the career of time by employment, we lengthen the duration of our lives by wise thoughts and useful actions. Life to him who wishes not to have lived in vain is thought and action.
Put this restriction on your pleasures; be cautious that they injure no being that lives.
Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want—the want of money.
It would be a considerable consolation to the poor and discontented, could they but see the means whereby the wealth they covet has been acquired, or the misery that it entails.
The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie.
Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.
Laws act after crimes have been committed; prevention goes before them both.
The change we personally experience from time to time, we obstinately deny to our principles.
Take care to be an economist in prosperity: there is no fear of your being one in adversity.
Very few public men but look upon the public as their debtors and their prey; so much for their pride and honesty.
The man whom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his troubles under the friendly shade of every tree, and may experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness.
Never lose sight of this important truth, that no one can be truly great until he has gained a knowledge of himself, a knowledge which can only be acquired by occasional retirement.
The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labors to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy.
Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant.
Silence is the safest respondent for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.
Sloth is torpidity of the mental faculties; the sluggard is a living insensible.
Soldiers are the only carnivorous animals that live in a gregarious state.
Ignorance, poverty, and vanity make many soldiers.
Those beings only are fit for solitude, who like nobody, and are liked by nobody.
Superfluity creates necessity, and necescity superfluity. Take care to be an economist in prosperity: there is no fear of your being one in adversity.
Surmise is the gossamer that malice blows on fair reputations, the corroding dew that destroys the choice blossoms. Surmise is primarily the squint of suspicion, and suspicion is established before it is confirmed.
Open your mouth and purse cautiously; and your stock of wealth and reputation shall, at least in repute, be great.
The rich and luxurious may claim an exclusive right to those pleasures which are capable of being purchased by pelf, in which the mind has no enjoyment, and which only afford a temporary relief to languor by steeping the senses in forgetfulness; but in the precious pleasures of the intellect, so easily accessible by all mankind, the great have no exclusive privilege; for such enjoyments are only to be procured by our own industry.
The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness.
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