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Quotes from Aphorisms — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

1742–1799 Germany

← All quotes by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

126 quotes

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

Aphorisms (1765)

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.

Aphorisms (1765)

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

Aphorisms (1765)

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

Aphorisms (1765)

He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.

Aphorisms (1765)

I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.

Aphorisms (1765)

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

Aphorisms (1765)

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

Aphorisms (1765)

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

Aphorisms (1765)

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

Aphorisms (1765)

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

Aphorisms (1765)

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

Aphorisms (1765)

A on his lips and not-A in his heart.

Aphorisms (1765)

To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.

Aphorisms (1765)

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

Aphorisms (1765)

Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.

Aphorisms (1765)

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

Aphorisms (1765)

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.

Aphorisms (1765)

The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

Aphorisms (1765)

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

Aphorisms (1765)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.