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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
Like
Invent
Devil
Poetry
Wouldn
Read
Makes
Paucity
Ideas
Contemptible
Something
Nowadays
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
No despotism is so formidable as that of a religion or a scientific system.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Marriage, in contrast to the flu, starts with a fever and ends with the chills.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
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
Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There are people who can believe anything they wish. What lucky creatures!
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
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
Man is perhaps half mind and half matter in the same way as the polyp is half plant and half animal. The strangest creatures are always found on the border lines of species.
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
One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.
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
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The greater part of human misery is caused by indolence.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
