He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.

Corruption fighter
At barely twenty-one years of age Lavater greatly distinguiJohann Kaspar Lavaterd himself by denouncing in conjunction with his friend Henry Fuseli the painter an iniquitous magistrate who was compelled to make restitution of his ill-gotten gains. The two principal sources from which Lavater developed his physiognomical studies were the writings of the Italian polymath Giambattista della Porta and the observations made by Sir Thomas Browne in his Religio Medici (translated into German in 1748 and praised by Lavater). Antagonist of Rationalism
Lavater had a mystic's indifference to historical Christianity and although regarded as a champion of orthodoxy was actually an antagonist of rationalism.