Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Germany
1 Jul 1742 // 24 Feb 1799
Scientist / Writer

Quotes

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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
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
It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of wisdom through a crowd without singeing someone's beard
With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet
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?
We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already
We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest
Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays