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A good part of the fame of most celebrated men is due to the shortsightedness of their admirers

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
Celebrated
Dues
Fame
Part
Good
Men
Shortsightedness
Admirers
Admirer

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Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.
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All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.
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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.
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To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.
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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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Man is a masterpiece of creation, if only because no amount of determinism can prevent him from believing that he acts as a free being.
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Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse.
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As nations improve, so do their gods.
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A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
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Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
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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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Why does a suppurating lung give so little warning and a sore on the finger so much?
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The drive to propagate our race has also propagated a lot of other things
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To live when you do not want to is dreadful, but it would be even more terrible to be immortal when you did not want to be. As things are, however, the whole ghastly burden is suspended from me by a thread which I can cut in two with a penny-knife.
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A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
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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.
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A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
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Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
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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.
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Everyone should study at least enough philosophy and belles-lettres to make his sexual experience more delectable.
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