Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

All quotations have been extracted from G.C. Lichtenberg, Ahorisms, Penguin Classics, 1990, transl. by R. J. Hollingdale. Taken from: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5574/lichtenb.htm



1765-1770

It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.

1768-1771

There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points "born" and "died" farther away from one another... The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers...

Drinking has, like painting, its mechanical and its poetical aspects, just as love has...

If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.


What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...

Is it so unjust, then, that man should leave the world by the same gate through which he entered it?

1772-1773

We ought really to call "a book" only that which contains something new: the rest are only a means of learning quickly what has already been done in this or that field. To discover new countries and to fournish accurate charts of what you have discovered: that is the difference. What has not yet been said on this matter?

1773-1775

Zezu Island. This island has remained undescribed for so long because the foolish customs of its inhabitants gave publishers everywhere the idea that an acount of it was a satire on their own country...

The journalist 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.

What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.

Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox.

1775-1776

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

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 with.

We do not think good metaphors are anything very important, but I think that a good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on...

1776-1779

If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.

What they call "heart" lies much lower than the fourth waistcoat button.

Men do not go on all fours, to be sure, but they go with all fours; no one can run fast without making a similar movement with his arms. Many people swing their arms when they walk, not imitatively but by nature: the same force that moves their legs seems at the same time to move their arms; and when people jump they make a leaping movement with their arms.

It is as though our languages were in a state of confusion: when we want an idea they bring us a word, when we require a word they bring us a dash, and when we expected a dash there stands an obscenity.

What a pity it isn't a sin to drink water, cried an Italian, how good it would taste.

1784-1788

Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of infinite meaning.

1789

To discover relationships and similarities between things that no one else sees. Wit can in this way lead to invention.

1789-1793

If walking on two legs is not natural to man it is certainly an invention that does him credit.

Can it be that the evil in the world is in general of more use the the good?

In the eyes of God there are only rules, strictly speaking only one rule with no exceptions. Because we do not know this supreme rule we construct general rules which are not rules at all; it could well be possible, indeed, that what we call rules could even for finite beings constitute exceptions.

This entire doctrine is worthless except as a subject of dispute.

It is a bad thing that truth has nowadays to have its cause pleaded by fiction, novels and fables.

In nature we find not words, but only the initial letters of words, and if we then attempt to read them we find that the new so-called words are again merely the initial letters of other words.


1793-1796

Nomenclature. I always believe it is best not to reform at all. It arouses animosity and envy and contempt, and too much is written about names that is really of no value whatever. The senseless disappears of itself, and that which is as it were an affront to nature does not grow again.

Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two times two equals four.

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More Lichtenberg aphorisms:
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There can hardly be stranger wares in the world than books: printed by people who do not understand them; sold by people who do not understand them; bound, reviewed and read by people who do not understand them; and now even written by people who do not understand them.

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of wisdom through a crowd without singeing someone's beard.

The tendency of people to take small things as important has resulted in many great things.

Now that education is so easy, men are drilled for greatness, just as dogs are trained to retrieve. In this way we've discovered a new sort of genius, those great at being drilled. These are the people who are mainly spoiling the market.

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

A man is never more serious than when he praises himself.

The often unreflected respect for old laws, old customs
and old religion we have to thank for all mischief in the world.

Naturally I don't know if it would become better, when it is different, but it has to become different, when it should become good.

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.--

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

Soothsayers make a better living than truthsayers.(1798)