Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes
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.
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.
Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.
I have never yet met anyone who did not think it was an agreeable sensation to cut tinfoil with scissors.
Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.
The wisdom of providence is as much revealed in the rarity of genius, as in the circumstance that not everyone is deaf or blind.
How might letters be most efficiently copied so that the blind might read them with their fingers?
The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers.
As soon as you know a man to be blind, you imagine that you can see it from his back.
Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.
Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.
Many intelligent people, when about to write . . . , force on their minds a certain notion about style, just as they screw up their faces when they sit for their portraits.
The construction of the universe is certainly very much easier to explain than is that of the plant.
Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.
The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.
What you have been obliged to discover by yourself leaves a path in your mind which you can use again when the need arises.
An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must at last return
Imagine the world so greatly magnified that particles of light look like twenty-four-pound cannon balls.
There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like '2 x 2= 13'.
How happily some people would live if they troubled themselves as little about other people's business as about their own.