Top 335 Quotes & Sayings by Georg C. Lichtenberg - Page 4

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

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.

The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud.

To live when you do not want to is dreadful, but it would be even more terrible to be immortal when you did not want to be. As things are, however, the whole ghastly burden is suspended from me by a thread which I can cut in two with a penny-knife.

The rules of grammar are mere human statutes, which is why when he speaks out of the possessed the Devil himself speaks bad Latin.

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

The grave is still the best shelter against the storms of destiny.

How might letters be most efficiently copied so that the blind might read them with their fingers?

It is in most cases more difficult to make intelligent people believe that you are what you are not, than really to become what you would appear to be.

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.

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.

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

We have to believe that everything has a cause, as the spider spins its web in order to catch flies. But it does this before it knows there are such things as flies.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year.

Non cogitant, ergo non sunt.

The most entertaining surface on earth is the human face.

Many are less fortunate than you' may not be a roof to live under, but it will serve to retire beneath in the event of a shower.

Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.

Many a man who is willing to be shot for his belief in a miracle would have doubted, had he been present at the miracle itself.

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

I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.

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.

Universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones.

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.

The fear of death which is imprinted in men is at the same time a great expedient Heaven employs to hinder them from many misdeeds: many things are left undone for fear of imperiling one's life or health.

I made the journey to knowledge like dogs who go for walks with their masters, a hundred times forward and backward over the same territory; and when I arrived I was tired.

It is a dangerous thing for the perfecting of our minds to gain applause by works that do not call forth the whole of our energies; for in that case one generally comes to a standstill.

Too much is unwholesome.

It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.

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.

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

Is it so unjust that a man should leave the world by the same gate through which he entered it?

There is a great difference between believing in something and believing in it again.

Honor is infinitely more valuable than positions of honor.

One use of dreams is that, unprejudiced by our often forced and artificial reflections, they represent the impartial outcome of our entire being.

He who says he hates all kinds of flattery, and says so in earnest, has undoubtedly not as yet become acquainted with all kinds of it, whether in substance or in form.

If brandy was made out of sparrows there would soon be no sparrows.

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

Superstition originates among ordinary people in the early and all too zealous instruction they receive in religion: they hear of mysteries, miracles, deeds of the Devil, and consider it very probable that things of this sort could occur in everything anywhere.

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

God creates the animals, man creates himself.

A good part of the fame of most celebrated men is due to the shortsightedness of their admirers

Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.

It not seldom happens that in the purposeless rovings and wanderings of the imagination we hunt down such game as can be put to use by our purposeful philosophy in its well-ordered household.

The highest point to which a weak but experienced mind can rise is detecting the weakness of better men.

If nature be regarded as the teacher and we poor human beings as her pupils, the human race presents a very curious picture. We all sit together at a lecture and possess the necessary principles for understanding it, yet we always pay more attention to the chatter of our fellow students than to the lecturer's discourse. Or, if our neighbor copies something down, we sneak it from him, stealing what he himself may have heard imperfectly, and add it to our own errors of spelling and opinion.

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

Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones.

The girl who reveals herself heart and soul to her friend reveals the secrets of the entire sex; for every girl is the guardian of the feminine mysteries.

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

Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

As nations improve, so do their gods.

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.

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

Barbaric accuracy - whimpering humility.

The course of the seasons is a piece of clockwork, with a cuckoo to call when it is spring.

It is a sure evidence of a good book if it pleases us more and more as we grow older.

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.

Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox.

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