Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

He who doesn't lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
The most deadly fruit is borne by the hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
If God were to hold out enclosed in His right hand all Truth, and in His left hand just the active search for Truth, though with the condition that I should always err therein, and He should say to me: Choose! I should humbly take His left hand and say: Father! Give me this one; absolute Truth belongs to Thee alone.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
One single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Precisely the way on which the species reaches its perfection, every individual human being (one earlier, one later) must have traversed, too.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
One can drink too much, but one never drinks enough.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
The more we see the more we must be able to imagine, and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand, and say: Father, I will take this one—the pure Truth is for You alone.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Man — who is he? Too bad to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
I, who ne'er
Went for myself a begging, go a borrowing,
And that for others. Borrowing's much the same
As begging; just as lending upon usury
Is much the same as thieving.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
To borrow scarce is better than to beg; As lending, lending upon interest, Scarce better is than stealing.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Yesterday I loved, today I suffer, tomorrow I die: but I still think fondly, today and tomorrow, of yesterday.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
The worst of superstitions is to think
One's own most bearable.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
When the heart dares to speak, it needs no preparation.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing