Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Biography : German physicist, satirist and Anglophile.
Born: 1742 - Died: 1799
Period:
18th century
Place of birth: Germany
Germany

Germany

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - Quotes

What good is all sunrise, if we do not stand up?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

sun

What good is all sunrise, if we do not stand up?

We all err, but everybody errs differently.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ? - Quotation of uncertain origin /

mistake

He could refract an idea which everyone thought simple into seven others, as the prism does with sunlight, each finer than the other, then gather together a host of others to recreate the white light of the sun, where others merely saw disorder and confusion.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

Is it not peculiar that a literal translation is almost always a terrible one? And yet, anything can be translated well. One sees here what it really means to understand fully a language; it means to understand fully the people who speak it.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

Do not have too artificial an idea of man but judge him naturally. Don't consider him too good or too bad.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

There is something in every person's character that cannot be broken — the bony structure of his character.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

character

How happy many people would be if they cared about other people's affairs as little as about their own.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

There are people that can believe everything they want. These are happy creatures.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

It is a pity that one cannot see the learned entrails of authors so as to discover what they have eaten.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

Among the greatest discoveries that the human mind has made in recent times belongs the art of judging books without having read them.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

But, what good is all of this light when people either have no eyes or deliberately shut those they have?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

light

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

to think

I have invariably found that, all else failing, a man's character can be deduced from nothing so surely as from a jest that he takes in bad part.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg /

character