Quote

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
Recognized
Men
Badly
Surely
Failing
Takes
Else
Jest
Character
Fails
Nothing

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

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There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where.
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One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
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Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.
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They do not think, therefore they are not.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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What we are able to judge with feeling is very little the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The feeling of health can only be gained by sickness.
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One of our forefathers must have read a forbidden book.
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What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed.
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Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.
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There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must at last return
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, bread-bread-fame or fame-fame-bread.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
Georg C. Lichtenberg