Quotes from G. C. Lichtenberg

One can live in this world on soothsaying but not on truth saying.

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

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

Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times — and this is the worst of all — before we have new ones.

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.

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.

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

Before we blame, we should first see if we can't excuse.

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage he won't encounter many rivals.

I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies, for the world needs such men more than heaven does.

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

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

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

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.

A book is a mirror: if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

Barbaric accuracy - whimpering humility.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.

Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede - not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen.

Every man has his moral backside too, which he doesn't expose unnecessarily but keeps covered as long as possible by the trousers of decorum.

The lower classes of men, though they do not think it worthwhile to record what they perceive, nevertheless perceive everything that is worth noting; the difference between them and a man of learning often consists in nothing more than the latter's facility for expression.

With most people, doubt about one thing is simply blind belief in another.

Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones.