Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants an...
GEORG C. LICHTENBERG This (document) is not obscure, nor should it be difficult to find.
ROBERT FREEMAN Through the palpable obscure find out / His uncouth way.
JOHN MILTON No papers, no money; no family, no friends, no sense of who you are. The obscurest of the obscure, s...
J.M. COETZEE Be obscure clearly.
E. B. WHITE When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books ...
MOBY This must be the obscure 'Jeopardy!'
JOHN SHIVERS The palpable obscure.
JOHN MILTON A Constitution should be short and obscure.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE A Constitution should be short and obscure
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.
BALTASAR GRACIAN I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.
HORACE Don't remember a meaning and be obscure to it.
JAMES A. BEST III A lot of times these destinations are obscure,
TIM CAHILL Never be so brief as to become obscure.
TRYON EDWARDS In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.
HORACE In trying to be concise I become obscure.
UNKNOWN POSTERITY, n. An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, t...
AMBROSE BIERCE Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable na...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.
LADY MARGUERITE BLESSINGTON Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.
MARGUERITE GARDINER Hardship makes the world obscure.
DON DELILLO Beware of words that refer to collectives of things for they can obscure our perception.
JIM GENOVESE What amazes me is that no matter how obscure or generic a TV show might be, there’s always someone...
GORD LACEY The past is certain, the future obscure.
THALES Dave Van Ronk is not an obscure figure. He's the biggest figure on an obscure scene, playing a k...
ETHAN COEN I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles...
LYNN NOTTAGE Am I a liar in your eyes?" he asked passionately. "Little skeptic, you shall be convinced. What love...
CHARLOTTE BRONTë It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.
HORACE Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure.
PHILIP K. DICK Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-n...
EDGAR ALLAN POE I went to libraries. I went to the Library of Congress. I went to obscure video shops. Some of the m...
DAVE DOUGLAS Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper pla...
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, other...
TACITUS Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL You can be so dignified that you obscure the reality of what is going on.
KATHY RODGERS For many persons, law appears to be black magic--an obscure domain that can be fathomed only by the ...
SUSAN C. ROSS It is better to be famous than notorious, but better to be notorious than obscure.
JAMES K. FEIBLEMAN One characteristic of modern poetry is that arrangement of parts which strikes many people as being ...
MURIEL RUKEYSER The obscure we see eventually, the completely apparent takes longer.
EDWARD R. MURROW Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The more obscure our tastes, the greater the proof of our genius.
JENNIFER DONNELLY A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.
WENDELL L. WILLKIE An intellectual is someone who avoids the mundane, and pursues the obscure.
RICHARD REEVES Between the demand to be clear,and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves...
EMIL M. CIORAN The whole purpose of propaganda is to make the obvious seem obscure, or offensive
STEFAN MOLYNEUX There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
MAYA ANGELOU There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.
MAYA ANGELOU I want to understand you,
I study your obscure language.
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.
JOSEPH JOUBERT Words like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision
JOSEPH JOUBERT And would it not be proud romance
Falling in some obscure advance,
To rise, a poppy field of F...
WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece
VLADIMIR NABOKOV It was not fog, as you thought. It was smog.
MAHRUKH The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.
EDWARD R. MURROW Words, like glasses, obscure everything which they do not make clear.
JOSEPH JOUBERT I'd rather hear an ugly truth, rather than an obscure lie.
ANA MONNAR Most of what we're finding (is) smaller than a dime. We're trying to say something deep and meaningf...
KELLY DIXON There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
MAYA ANGELOU It flourished with the Saracens, and suffered in the obscure and fanatical days of the Middle Ages.
ISAAC MAYER WISE I am not concerned with making esoteric, obscure kinds of films. These are films that can share and ...
MIKE LEIGH It's high and low (culture), and we're casting a net wide. Almost everyone knows of these things; it...
KURT ANDERSEN We're still struggling in a fog of volatility that may obscure the fact the market is, or may be clo...
ROBERT KERR She leaned in to smell the apricot-tinted rose whose petals had just unfolded into a ruffled cup. Th...
ELLEN HERRICK He (his father) was determined not to allow them to negate or obscure his accomplishments.
GREG GONZALEZ Obviously, if we deploy something that detects explosives, the enemy will simply try to obscure them...
BILL DUNN The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generatio...
OSCAR WILDE As night the life-inclining stars best shows,
So lives obscure the starriest souls disclose.
GEORGE CHAPMAN Not to create confusion in what is clear, but to throw light on
what is obscure.
UNKNOWN Baggage is just the lies you tell yourself about the way things are. Those lies clutter up and obscu...
ANNETTE VAILLANCOURT It's quite an obscure notion for a kid, no? To want to be a curator. But even then, I knew that ...
HANS-ULRICH OBRIST I am not afraid of death, but would not want to die in some obscure or pointless way.
ISABELLE EBERHARDT That's the most obscure place you could have it. Most players won't go. I think he set up to discour...
CHRIS CHELIOS There's so much you can do with it. There's so much energy involved. And, with Fosse's oblique and o...
CHARLIE BARNETT I was sad when I knew I was going to have to make this record a little more obscure and a little har...
MATTHEW CAWS He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and...
SAMUEL JOHNSON The first step to wisdom is to avoid the common fallacy which considers everything profound that is ...
GREGORY NUNN You -- poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are -- I entreat to accept me as a husband.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obs...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. More people are troubled by what is plain in Scripture than by what is obscure.
ROY L. SMITH Elections should highlight principled disagreements, but they must not obscure our capacity to coope...
TODD YOUNG Everyone has a kind of limitation respectively. Leaders don’t allow their own to obscure them in a...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a...
BILL WATTERSON Color is made to obscure the brightest endowments, to degrade the fairest character, and to check th...
CHARLES LENOX REMOND What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is no...
WILLIAM BLAKE It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than the investigation of the...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. It's a challenge because we really have to do our homework. We're used to looking for obscure hotels...
TED LAWSON The attacks of September 11 persuaded many Americans that what might seem to be obscure or distant p...
MICHAEL MANDELBAUM Things will absolutely go wrong. In a healthy team, as soon as things go wrong, that information sho...
STEVEN SINOFSKY I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten ...
ROBERT BROWNING I give the fight up; let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me,
I want to be forg...
ROBERT BROWNING A doctrine capable of being stated only in obscure and involved terms is open to reasonable suspicio...
FREDERICK POLLOCK Of the Sturges family, much more is known than is available about poor Irish immigrants and obscure ...
PRESTON STURGES A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.
[Lat., Prudens futuri temporis exitum
Calig...
HORACE (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS) Those quotations were really quite obscure. Anyone can see that he is a very well read man.
BARBARA PYM Like other occult techniques of divination, the statistical method has a private jargon deliberate...
G. O. ASHLEY Like other occult techniques of divination, the statistical method has a private jargon deliberatel...
G. O. ASHLEY
More G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for de...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfe...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday pen...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered a...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of the...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Man is a gregarious animal and much more so in his mind than in his body. A golden rule; judge men n...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innoc...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG In each of us there is a little of all of us.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himse...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with whic...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of c...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of o...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the hea...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimina...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG With the majority of people unbelief in one thing is founded on the blind belief in another.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and ex...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can not expect an apostle to peer out.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG To be content with life -- or to live merrily, rather --all that is required is that we bestow on al...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still hone...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Ideas too are a life and a world.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this fo...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right co...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of th...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet c...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesse...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold peop...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage -- he won't encounter many rivals.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of ju...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and co...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wr...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible infl...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Tem...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole t...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you ca...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the a...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a chi...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know eve...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by po...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; o...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one h...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be impa...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly th...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feel...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Man loves company, even if it is only that of a smoldering candle.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clou...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness ...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when t...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of sayi...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Good taste is either that which agrees with my taste or that which subjects itself to the rule of re...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderl...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to dis...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animal...
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done.
G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer t...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with every...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eye...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read th...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimina...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can not expect an apostle to peer out.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG When a book and a head collide and there is a hollow sound, is it always from the book?
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our mou...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must a...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Some men come by the name of genius in the same way as an insect comes by the name of centipede - no...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God ...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG I cannot stop thinking that I died before I was born and that at my death I will return to the same ...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered a...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness ...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Many a man who is willing to be shot for his belief in a miracle would have doubted, had he been pre...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG You can make a good living from soothsaying, but not from truthsaying
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG As nations improve, so do their gods
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Those who never have time do least
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and co...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Man loves company even if only that of a small burning candle
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Jedermann sollte wenigstens soviel Philosophie und schöne Wissenschaften studieren, als nötig ist,...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Man loves company even if it is only that of a small burning candle
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG To read means to borrow; to create out of one's readings is paying off one's debts
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG If moderation is a fault then indifference is a crime
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is that they must change if...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?
{Said i...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Aujourd'hui, on cherche partout à répandre le savoir; qui sait si, dans quelques siècles, il n'y ...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The drive to propagate our race has also propagated a lot of other things
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with every...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG It not seldom happens that in the purposeless rovings and wanderings of the imagination we hunt down...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering ...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG In the weak, lack of strength to defend oneself passes over into complaining. This can be observed i...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of th...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG For the loss of those we have loved there is no alleviation but time and carefully and rationally ch...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG He who is enamoured of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rival...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Sometimes we know a person better than we can say, or at least than we do say.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG En la naturaleza no hay palabras, solamente iniciales. Al releer las nuevas "palabras", descubrimos ...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Nothing is more inimical to the progress of science than the belief that we know what we do not yet ...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG It requires no especially great talent to write in such a way that another will be very hard put to ...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG It makes a great difference by what path we come to a knowledge of certain things. If we begin in ou...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Every condition of the soul has its own sign and expression...So you will see how hard it is to seem...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of i...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG