Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

Man is a masterpiece of creation, if only because no amount of determinism can prevent him from believing that he acts as a free being.

A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

Brevity: To say at once whatever is to be said.

The celebrated painter Gainsborough got as much pleasure from seeing violins as from hearing them.

Do not judge God's world from your own. Trim your own hedge as you wish and plant your flowers in the patterns you can understand, but do not judge the garden of nature from your little window box.

I forget most of what I read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account.

Men still have to be governed by deception.

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

Why does a suppurating lung give so little warning and a sore on the finger so much?

God creates the animals, man creates himself.

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

They do not think, therefore they are not.

The natural scientists of the previous age knew less than we do and believed they were very close to the goal: we have taken very great steps in its direction and now discover we are still very far away from it. With the most rational philosophers an increase in their knowledge is always attended by an increased conviction of their ignorance.

Deliberate virtue is never worth much: The virtue of feeling or habit is the thing.

If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example.

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.

The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

Nowadays beautiful women are counted among the talents of their husbands.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

What we have to discover for ourselves leaves behind in our mind a pathway that can be used on another occasion.

Man is a masterpiece of creation . . .

Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking.

To see every day how people get the name 'genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name 'millipede'-not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14-this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit; the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.

Some people come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede -- not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above 14.

I have often noticed that when people come to understand a mathematical proposition in some other way than that of the ordinary demonstration, they promptly say, "Oh, I see. That's how it must be." This is a sign that they explain it to themselves from within their own system.

To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one.

To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.