Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799)
German scientist, satirist and philosopher.
With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.
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.
A on his lips and not-A in his heart.
Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox.
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.
If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.
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.
The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.
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. Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true.
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.
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.
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 impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard.
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...
Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.
Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was — nobody any longer wanted to be that.
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.
A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.