Georg C. Lichtenberg quotes:

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

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.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones.

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?

If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

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

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.

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

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me.

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

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

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

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

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.

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

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.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.

I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.

Some people come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede -- not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above 14.

The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.

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.

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.

A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.

We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.

How few friends would remain friends if each could see the sentiments of the other in their entirety.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

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.

The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, "bread-bread-fame" or "fame-fame-bread.

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.

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.

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

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown...

Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.

Man is a masterpiece of creation . . .

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

A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.

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.

Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything.

We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.

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.

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

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?

He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.

It not seldom happens that in the purposeless rovings and wanderings of the imagination we hunt down such game as can be put to use by our purposeful philosophy in its well-ordered household.

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.

It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him.

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.

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.

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

God, who winds up our sundials ...

Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

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

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

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

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.

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

He who understands the wise is wise already.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

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

To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.

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.

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

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.

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

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

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