Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

215 Sourced Quotes

This whole theory is good for nothing except disputing about.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Human pride is a strange thing; it cannot easily be suppressed, and if you stop up hole A will peep forth again in a twinkling from another hole B, and if this is closed it is ready to come out at hole C, and so on.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
No people are more conceited than those who depict their own feelings, especially if they happen to have a little prose at their command for the occasion.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
He who understands nothing but chemistry doesn't even understand chemistry.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Truly, men make too little use of their lives; and so it is no wonder that the world should still be in such a poor way.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Do not take too artificial a view of mankind but judge them from a natural standpoint, deeming them neither over good nor over bad.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
How few friends would remain friends if each could see the sentiments of the other in their entirety.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I have never yet met anyone who did not think it was an agreeable sensation to cut tinfoil with scissors.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Knowledge acquired too rapidly and without being personally supplemented is never very productive.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Is it not strange that mankind should so willingly battle for religion and so unwillingly live according to its precepts?

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
People don't like to choose lot #1 in a lottery. "Choose it," Reason cries loudly. "It has as good a chance of winning the 12,000 thalers as any other." "In Heaven's name don't choose it," a je ne sais quoi whispers. "There's no example of such little numbers being listed before great winnings." And actually no one takes it.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Every condition of the soul has its own sign and expression...So you will see how hard it is to seem original without being so.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don't understand them; sold by people who don't understand them; bound, criticized and read by people who don't understand them; and now even written by people who don't understand them.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
No despotism is so formidable as that of a religion or a scientific system.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
How happily some people would live if they troubled themselves as little about other people's business as about their own.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as so much as existing. Away with it!

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I would give something to know for whose sake precisely those deeds were really done which report says were done for the fatherland.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
There is something in the character of every man which cannot be broken in--the skeleton of his character; and to try to alter this is like training a sheep for draught purposes.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of infinite meaning.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
With God thoughts are colors, with us they are pigments-even the most abstract one may be accompanied by physical pain.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Everyone should study at least enough philosophy and belles-lettres to make his sexual experience more delectable.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
One can live in this world on soothsaying but not on truth saying.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
We are ourselves the measure of the miraculous; if we should find a universal measure, the miraculous elements would disappear, and all things would be of equal size.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because invention presupposes an extensive independent contemplation of things.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg