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There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don't understand them sold by people who don't understand them bound, criticized and read by people who don't understand them and now even written by people who don't understand them.

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
Read
Commodity
Understand
Sold
Book
Bound
Even
Hardly
World
Bounds
People
Stranger
Books
Criticized
Written
Printed

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

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Many a man who is willing to be shot for his belief in a miracle would have doubted, had he been present at the miracle itself.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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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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
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If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Pain warns us not to exert our limbs to the point of breaking them. How much knowledge would we not need to recognize this by the exercise of mere reason.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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A man has virtues enough if he deserves pardon for his faults on account of them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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
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God created man in His own image, says the Bible philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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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To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Some people feel with their heads and think with their hearts.
Georg C. Lichtenberg