339 Quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

The world is a body common to all men, changes to it bring about a change in the souls of all men who are turned towards that part of it at that moment.

I have never yet met anyone who did not think it was an agreeable sensation to cut tinfoil with scissors.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate.

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.

Nowadays beautiful women are counted among the talents of their husbands.

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages.

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

The fear of death which is imprinted in men is at the same time a great expedient Heaven employs to hinder them from many misdeeds: many things are left undone for fear of imperiling one's life or health.