Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.

The celebrated painter Gainsborough got as much pleasure from seeing violins as from hearing them.

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

Above all things expand the frontiers of science: without this the rest counts for nothing.

A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example.

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown...

The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.

An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must at last return

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand.

Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

One should never trust a person who, while assuring you of something, puts his hands on his heart.

There are many who believe that 'Marriage is not a word - it is a sentence!' Whether you are indeed 'married' or if you are 'single', I am sure that funny quotes on weddings and marriages always tend to put a wicked smile to the face. It is often said that 'People who are married are often desperate to get out of it and people who are single can't wait to get in!'

A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.

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

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages.

Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.

First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.

It thunders, howls, roars, hisses, whistles, blusters, hums, growls, rumbles, squeaks, groans, sings, crackles, cracks, rattles, flickers, clicks, snarls, tumbles, whimpers, whines, rustles, murmurs, crashes, clucks, to gurgle, tinkles, blows, snores, claps, to lisp, to cough, it boils, to scream, to weep, to sob, to croak, to stutter, to lisp, to coo, to breathe, to clash, to bleat, to neigh, to grumble, to scrape, to bubble. These words, and others like them, which express sounds are more than mere symbols: they are

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

Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind.

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.