Quotes by G. C. Lichtenberg

G. C. Lichtenberg

German writer and physicist

Alive from: 1742-1799

Category: Writers (Contemporary)

Quotes 1 till 15 of 121.

• G. C. Lichtenberg

  

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  Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.

• G. C. Lichtenberg

  

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  He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

• G. C. Lichtenberg

  

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

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  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.

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  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.

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

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  It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement.

• G. C. Lichtenberg

  

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

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  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.

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

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  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.

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  A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

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  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.

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

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