Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - Man Quotes

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Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
As soon as you know a man to be blind, you imagine that you can see it from his back.

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

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

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
Man is a creature who searches for causes; he could be named the cause-searcher within the hierarchy of minds.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Man is perhaps half mind and half matter in the same way as the polyp is half plant and half animal. The strangest creatures are always found on the border lines of species.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was — nobody any longer wanted to be that.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It may not be natural for man to walk on two legs, but it was a noble invention.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg