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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Life
Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Prejudice, Proverbs
When ill news comes too late to be serviceable to your neighbor, keep it to yourself.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: News
Put this restriction on your pleasures; be cautious that they injure no being that lives.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Pleasure
Beauty gains little, and homeliness and deformity lose much by gaudy attire.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Dress
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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
Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant. Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Silence
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
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
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
Ignorance, poverty, and vanity make many soldiers.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Troops of furies march in the drunkard’s triumph.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Drunkenness
Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Silence
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
Those beings only are fit for solitude, who like nobody, and are liked by nobody.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Solitude
Superfluity creates necessity, and necescity superfluity. Take care to be an economist in prosperity: there is no fear of your being one in adversity.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Economy, Prosperity
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Gossip
Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Custom, Truth
By fools knaves fatten; every knave finds a gull.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want—the want of money.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Poverty, Money
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
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 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
Humility is the first lesson we learn from reflection, and self-distrust the first proof we give of having obtained a knowledge of ourselves.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Humility
Silence is a trick when it imposes. Pedants and scholars, churchmen and physicians, abound in silent pride.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Silence
The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Weakness
Pride in boasting of family antiquity, makes duration stand for merit.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Ancestry
Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Humor
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