Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

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

He who is enamoured of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.

Mi hipocondria es ciertamente la capacidad de extraer en cualquier suceso de la vida, llámese como se llame, la mayor cantidad de veneno en beneficio propio.

No trates de mostrarte excesivamente ingenioso para evitar que un hombre por naturaleza ingenioso perciba por casualidad que en realidad eres exactamente como quisieras que él fuera.

The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.

I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.

Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.

Cuando releo mis viejos cuadernos de reflexiones, a veces doy con una idea propia que me satisface. Me sorprende que una idea se pueda volver tan ajena para mí y mi sistema, y me alegro tanto como si se le hubiera ocurrido a un antepasado.

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

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.

Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.

To make clever people believe we are what we are not is in most instances harder than really to become what we want to seem to be.

The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate