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Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.
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
Humor
Takes
Character
Better
Nothing
Reveals
Kind
Offense
Men
Joke
Jokes
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
Many a man who is willing to be shot for his belief in a miracle would have doubted, had he been present at the miracle itself.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
What we are able to judge with feeling is very little the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Non cogitant, ergo non sunt.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
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
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.
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
A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is a sure evidence of a good book if it pleases us more and more as we grow older.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches are made.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
