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There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.

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
Done
Desires
Even
Decades
Much
Greatness
People
Genius
Talent
Century
Perceiving
Desire
Decade
Certain
Possess

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Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.
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A good part of the fame of most celebrated men is due to the shortsightedness of their admirers
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How happily some people would live if they troubled themselves as little about other people's business as about their own.
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Everyone is a genius at least once a year.
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Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
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It is astonishing how much the word infinitely is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, etc. The concept must have something pleasing about it, or its misuse could not have become so general.
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The drive to propagate our race has also propagated a lot of other things
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What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?
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If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.
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A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.
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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.
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The feeling of health can only be gained by sickness.
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A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.
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Those who never have time do least
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When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?
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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.
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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.
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The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
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A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
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What we are able to judge with feeling is very little the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.
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