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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

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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
Pride
Paced
Another
Replied
Kind
Dwelling
Plato
Splendid
Carpet
Diogenes
Thus
Carpets
Across
Trample

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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.
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To read means to borrow to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.
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What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.
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I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.
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It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
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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.
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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.
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The rules of grammar are mere human statutes, which is why when he speaks out of the possessed the Devil himself speaks bad Latin.
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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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The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.
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Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.
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The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.
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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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The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.
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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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He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.
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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.
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Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.
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