344 Quotes by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.

The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.

Everyone is perfectly willing to learn from unpleasant experience – if only the damage of the first lesson could be repaired.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

I forget the greater part of what I read, but all the same it nourishes my mind.

Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.

The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit; the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.

Kenntnis der Mittel ohne eine eigentliche Anwendung, ja ohne Gabe und Willen, sie anzuwenden, ist, was man jetzt gemeiniglich Gelehrsamkeit nennt.