339 Quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

Everyone is a genius at least once a year.

A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.

I made the journey to knowledge like dogs who go for walks with their masters, a hundred times forward and backward over the same territory; and when I arrived I was tired.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

If nature be regarded as the teacher and we poor human beings as her pupils, the human race presents a very curious picture. We all sit together at a lecture and possess the necessary principles for understanding it, yet we always pay more attention to the chatter of our fellow students than to the lecturer's discourse. Or, if our neighbor copies something down, we sneak it from him, stealing what he himself may have heard imperfectly, and add it to our own errors of spelling and opinion.

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking.

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.