339 Quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

With God thoughts are colors, with us they are pigments-even the most abstract one may be accompanied by physical pain.

Reading means borrowing.

People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because invention presupposes an extensive independent contemplation of things.

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

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.

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.