Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes - Page 6

A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example.

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.

People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles.

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

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.

Barbaric accuracy - whimpering humility.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.

A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.

Too much is unwholesome.

Reading means borrowing.

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.

People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.

Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind.

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.

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

Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

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.

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

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

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

Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.