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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Fools
Nobility should be elective, not hereditary.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Names
By fools knaves fatten; every knave finds a gull.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Sloth is torpidity of the mental faculties; the sluggard is a living insensible.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Laws act after crimes have been committed; prevention goes before them both.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Novels do not force their readers to sin, but only instruct them how to sin.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Contentment
There are few tables where convivial talents will not pass in payment, especially where the host wants brains, or the guest has money.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Soldiers are the only carnivorous animals that live in a gregarious state.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Egotism
Beauty gains little, and homeliness and deformity lose much by gaudy attire.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Dress
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Reading
The change we personally experience from time to time, we obstinately deny to our principles.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Principles
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Poverty
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Gambling
Many are discontented with the name of idler, who are nevertheless content to do worse than nothing.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Industry
Ignorance, poverty, and vanity make many soldiers.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Open your mouth and purse cautiously; and your stock of wealth and reputation shall, at least in repute, be great.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Caution
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Self-reliance
A moral lesson is better expressed in short sayings than in long discourse.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Morality, Morals
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Forgiveness, Fortune
Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Humor
Profound meditation in solitude and silence frequently exalts the mind above its natural tone, fires the imagination, produces the most refined and sublime conceptions. The soul then tastes the purest and most refined delight, and almost loses the idea of existence in the intellectual pleasure it receives. The mind on every motion darts through space into eternity; and raised, in its free enjoyment of its powers by its own enthusiasm, strengthens itself in the habitude of contemplating the noblest subjects, and of adopting the most heroic pursuits.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Meditation
The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Weakness
Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Silence
They that do nothing are in the readiest way to do that which is worse than nothing.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Idleness
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John Muir American Naturalist
- Charles Darwin British Naturalist
- David Attenborough English Naturalist, Broadcaster
- Diane Ackerman American Poet, Naturalist
- E. O. Wilson American Sociobiologist
- Joseph Wood Krutch American Writer
- Henry David Thoreau American Philosopher
- Masanobu Fukuoka Japanese Buddhist Polymath
- Deepak Chopra Indian-born American Physician
- Edward de Bono British Psychologist, Writer
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