344 Quotes by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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.

Why does a suppurating lung give so little warning and a sore on the finger so much?

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

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

He marvelled at the fact that the cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were.

Truly, men make too little use of their lives; and so it is no wonder that the world should still be in such a poor way.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.