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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?
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
Something
Nowadays
Like
Invent
Devil
Poetry
Wouldn
Read
Makes
Paucity
Ideas
Contemptible
More quotes by 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 sure evidence of a good book if it pleases us more and more as we grow older.
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
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
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
I am grateful that I am not as judgmental as all those censorious, self-righteous people around me. In each of us there is a little of all of us.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The celebrated painter Gainsborough got as much pleasure from seeing violins as from hearing them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
A man has virtues enough if he deserves pardon for his faults on account of them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
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
The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence Two times two is four.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
We have to believe that everything has a cause, as the spider spins its web in order to catch flies. But it does this before it knows there are such things as flies.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Those who never have time do least
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
