Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

In the weak, lack of strength to defend oneself passes over into complaining. This can be observed in children when they are mistreated by bigger children; but the best always stay obstinately and defiantly silent.

El hombre tenía tal entendimiento que ya casi no servía para nada.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Nuestros tiempos, donde los insectos coleccionan insectos y las mariposas hablan de mariposas.

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoitre the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.

It makes a great difference by what path we come to a knowledge of certain things. If we begin in our youth with metaphysics and religion we can easily proceed along a series of rational conclusions that will lead us to the immortality of the soul. Not every other path will lead to this, at least not quite so easily.

We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.

Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.

Каквито са хората, такива са и книгите, които пишат.

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

Es asombrosa la cantidad de baratijas convencionales a las que recurrimos al expresarnos por impreso. La mayoría de los escritores asumen la expresión de quienes posan para el retrato de un pintor. Recorridos de la pose y el compromiso, escalón por escalón.

Varias veces he sido censurado por faltas que mi censor no tuvo el ingenio o la energía de cometer.

Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.