Georg Christoph Lichtenberg quotes - page 4

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
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. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war? View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
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. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Good taste is either that which agrees with my taste or that which subjects itself to the rule of reason. From this we can see how useful it is to employ reason in seeking out the laws of taste. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
One has to do something new in order to see something new. View quote
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg