Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799)
German scientist, satirist and philosopher.
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.
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.
The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.
The great rule: 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.
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.
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?
A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.
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.
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.
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
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.
It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard.