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If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Georg C. Lichtenberg
Age: 56 †
Born: 1742
Born: July 1
Died: 1799
Died: February 24
Astronomer
French Moralist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Scientist
University Teacher
Writer
København
Nothing
Fails
Men
Recognized
Badly
Surely
Failing
Takes
Else
Character
Jest
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The world is a body common to all men, changes to it bring about a change in the souls of all men who are turned towards that part of it at that moment.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points born and died farther away from one another. The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The course of the seasons is a piece of clockwork, with a cuckoo to call when it is spring.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Ideas too are a life and a world.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
We judge nothing so hastily as character, and yet there is nothing over which we should be more cautious.... I have always found that the so-called bad people improve on closer acquaintance, while the good fall off.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.
Georg C. Lichtenberg