Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann Quotes
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Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.
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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.
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Nobility should be elective, not hereditary.
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The quarter of an hour before dinner is the worst that suitors can choose.
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Economy is an excellent lure to betray people into expense.
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The sluggard is a living insensible.
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Silence is a trick when it imposes. Pedants and scholars, churchmen and physicians, abound in silent pride.
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The lust of dominion innovates so imperceptibly that we become complete despots before our wanton abuse of power is perceived; the tyranny first exercised in the nursery is exhibited in various shapes and degrees in every stage of our existence.
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Troops of furies march in the drunkard's triumph.
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Take care to be an economist in prosperity. There is no fear of your being one in adversity.
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Indolent people, whatever taste they may have for society, seek eagerly for pleasure, and find nothing. They have an empty head and seared hearts.
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Many species of wit are quite mechanical; these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies.
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The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness.
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Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.
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Truth lies in a small compass! The Aristotelians say, all truth is contained in Aristotle, in one place or another. Galileo makes Simplicius say so, but shows the absurdity of that speech by answering all truth is contained in a lesser compass, namely, in the alphabet.
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The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie.
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Though fancy may be the patient's complaint, necessity is often the doctor's.
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One ought to love society, if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.
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Who conquers indolence conquers all other hereditary sins.
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Books afford the surest relief in the most melancholy moments.
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A good name will wear out; a bad one may be turned; a nickname lasts forever.
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By fools, knaves fatten; by bigots, priests are well clothed; every knave finds a gull.
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Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want - the want of money.
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Suicides pay the world a bad compliment. Indeed, it may so happen that the world has been beforehand with them in incivility. Granted. Even then the retaliation is at their own expense.
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Family pride entertains many unsocial opinions.
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Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.
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The ill usage of every minute is a new record against us in heaven.
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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.
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When soured by disappointment we must endeavor to pursue some fixed and pleasing course of study, that there may be no blank leaf in our book of life. Painful and disagreeable ideas vanish from the mind that can fix its attention upon any subject.
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The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties.
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Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
- Born: December 8, 1728
- Died: October 7, 1795
- Occupation: Writer