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
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
The change we personally experience from time to time, we obstinately deny to our principles.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Principles
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Action, Occupation
Soldiers are the only carnivorous animals that live in a gregarious state.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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
Very few public men but look upon the public as their debtors and their prey; so much for their pride and honesty.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Public
By fools knaves fatten; every knave finds a gull.
—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
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.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Laziness
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 is often worse than wine; intoxicating both the holder and beholder.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Beauty, Wine
Sloth is torpidity of the mental faculties; the sluggard is a living insensible.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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
The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Weakness
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
Conceit and confidence are both of them cheats.—The first always imposes on itself; the second frequently deceives others.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Conceit
When ill news comes too late to be serviceable to your neighbor, keep it to yourself.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: News
Pride in boasting of family antiquity, makes duration stand for merit.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Ancestry
Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Prejudice, Proverbs
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
Laws act after crimes have been committed; prevention goes before them both.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Fools with bookish knowledge, are children with edged weapons, they hurt themselves, and put others in pain.—The half-learned is more dangerous than the simpleton.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Fools
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
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
Beauty gains little, and homeliness and deformity lose much by gaudy attire.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Dress
They that do nothing are in the readiest way to do that which is worse than nothing.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Topics: Idleness
A good name will wear out; a bad one may be turned; a nickname lasts forever.
—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
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
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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