Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes - Page 4

In every man there is something of all men.

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

The most entertaining surface on earth is the human face.

Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.

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

A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.

If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever. Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

As nations improve, so do their gods.

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

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

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.

How happily some people would live if they troubled themselves as little about other people's business as about their own.

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.

Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.

The lower classes of men, though they do not think it worthwhile to record what they perceive, nevertheless perceive everything that is worth noting; the difference between them and a man of learning often consists in nothing more than the latter's facility for expression.

To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

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.

Above all things expand the frontiers of science: without this the rest counts for nothing.

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

How did mankind ever come by the idea of liberty? What a grand thought it was!

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.