344 Quotes by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

He who says he hates all kinds of flattery, and says so in earnest, has undoubtedly not as yet become acquainted with all kinds of it, whether in substance or in form.

It makes a great difference by what path we come to a knowledge of certain things. If we begin in our youth with metaphysics and religion we can easily proceed along a series of rational conclusions that will lead us to the immortality of the soul. Not every other path will lead to this, at least not quite so easily.

Pain warns us not to exert our limbs to the point of breaking them. How much knowledge would we not need to recognize this by the exercise of mere reason.

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.

The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.

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.

No people are more conceited than those who depict their own feelings, especially if they happen to have a little prose at their command for the occasion.

Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of.

There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don’t understand them; sold by people who don’t understand them; bound, criticized and read by people who don’t understand them; and now even written by people who don’t understand them.