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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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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
Given
Thirty
Two
Instance
Anything
Patterns
Might
Bread
Arranged
Like
Fame
Motives
Lead
Winds
Wind
Pattern
Names
Motive

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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.
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It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.
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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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The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.
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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
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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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Everyone is a genius at least once a year.
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It is a great shame most of our words are misused tools / which often still smell of the mud in which previous owners / desecrated them.
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Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
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Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.
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A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
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He who says he hates all kinds of flattery, and says so in earnest, has undoubtedly not as yet become acquainted with all kinds of it, whether in substance or in form.
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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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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.
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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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Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Ideas too are a life and a world.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
Georg C. Lichtenberg