Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - Read Quotes

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Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I forget the greater part of what I read, but all the same it nourishes my mind.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I would often rather read what a famous author has cut from one of his works than what he has let stand.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them.

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
To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

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
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