Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

The most brightly colored birds sing the worst; the same goes for people.

We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.

Wenn ich im Traum mit jemanden disputiere und der mich widerlegt und belehrt, so bin ich es, des sich selbst belehrt, also nachdenkt. Dieses Nachdenken wird also unter der Form von Gespräch angeschaut.(...) Da wir eigentlich nicht gnau wissen, wo wir denken, so können wir den Gedanken hinversetzen, wo wir wollen. So wie man sprechen kann, daß man glaubt, es komme von einem Dritten, so kann man auch so denken, daß es läßt, als würde es uns gesagt: Genius Sokratispp. Wie erstaunend vieles ließe sich nicht durch die Träume noch entwickeln.

Nothing is more inimical to the progress of science than the belief that we know what we do not yet know.

Is our conception of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?

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.

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

Ein Buch ist ein Spiegel wenn ein Affe hineinsieht so kann kein Apostel heraus gucken.

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

Има хора, които си въобразяват, че всичко, което се прави със сериозен вид, е разумно.

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.