339 Quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.

The course of the seasons is a piece of clockwork, with a cuckoo to call when it is spring.

Those who never have time do least

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.

Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.

We now possess four principles of morality: 1) a philosophical: do good for its own sake, out of respect for the law; 2) a religious: do good because it is God's will, out of love of God; 3) a human: do good because it will promote your happiness, out of self-love; 4) a political: do good because it will promote the welfare of the society of which you are a part, out of love of society having regard to yourself. But is this not all one single principle, only viewed from different sides?

It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.

Do not judge God's world from your own. Trim your own hedge as you wish and plant your flowers in the patterns you can understand, but do not judge the garden of nature from your little window box.

We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.