G. C. Lichtenberg Quotes
When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?
I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.
Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.
It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.
Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones.
Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it.
Great men too make mistakes, and many among them do it so often that one is almost tempted to call them little men.
A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.
You believe I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.
What we are able to judge with feeling is very little; the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.
Everyone is perfectly willing to learn from unpleasant experience - if only the damage of the first lesson could be repaired.
A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as so much as existing. Away with it!
I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.
The world is a body common to all men, changes to it bring about a change in the souls of all men who are turned towards that part of it at that moment.
There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where.
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.
Deliberate virtue is never worth much: The virtue of feeling or habit is the thing.
Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think.
Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.
He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.
Above all things expand the frontiers of science: without this the rest counts for nothing.
Is it not strange that mankind should so willingly battle for religion and so unwillingly live according to its precepts?
One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.
Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking.
I am grateful that I am not as judgmental as all those censorious, self-righteous people around me. In each of us there is a little of all of us.
A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
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.
Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.
After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?
We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
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.