Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Nature
Shortsightedness
Originates
Observes
Simplicity
Noble
Works
Often
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There is something in the character of every man which cannot be broken in--the skeleton of his character and to try to alter this is like training a sheep for draught purposes.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.
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
Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Ideas too are a life and a world.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
To live when you do not want to is dreadful, but it would be even more terrible to be immortal when you did not want to be. As things are, however, the whole ghastly burden is suspended from me by a thread which I can cut in two with a penny-knife.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The great trick of regarding small departures from the truth as the truth itself - on which is founded the entire integral calculus - is also the basis of our witty speculations, where the whole thing would often collapse if we considered the departures with philosophical rigour.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
In each of us there is a little of all of us.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Why does a suppurating lung give so little warning and a sore on the finger so much?
Georg C. Lichtenberg
To see every day how people get the name 'genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name 'millipede'-not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14-this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
