Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

Let a man be endowed with ten virtues and have but one fault and the one fault will eclipse and darken all the virtues.

Humankind's chief fault is that they have so many small ones.

I am fascinated by people's flaws and delusions: all the messy bits of human nature we all try to pretend we don't have.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

People are made up of flaws.

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.

I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect.

No man lives without fault.

We all have shortcomings.

None of us don't have a vice.

We all have faults.

I've learned that we all have an ugly side.

Where love fails we espy all faults.

Faults and defects every work of man must have.

Everybody has their weaknesses.

Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.

A vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbors it, and, as such, condemned by self-love.

There are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder.

What we cut off from our other faults is very often but so much added to our pride.

Oh, 'tis not my qualities they object to! 'Tis my lack of vice.

Amiable weaknesses of human nature.

I am not a perfect being. . . . I have more faults than I know what to do with. I have a naughty temper. I am stubborn, impatient of hindrances and of stupidity. I have not in the truest sense a Christian spirit. I am naturally a fighter. I am lazy. I put off till tomorrow what I might better do today. I do not feel that I have been compensated for the two senses I lack. I have worked hard for all the senses I have got, and always I beg for more.

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.