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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Quote of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - Do not have too artificial an...


Biography - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg:

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

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


Note 

Note






Translation

Translation

(French, German)



French
N'ayez pas de l'homme une idée trop factice, mais jugez de lui naturellement; ne le tenez ni pour trop bon, ni pour trop mauvais.

German
Habe keine zu künstliche Idee vom Menschen, sondern urteile natürlich von ihm, halt ihn weder für zu gut noch zu böse.




See also 

See also...



For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Man is neither good nor bad, he is born with instincts and aptitudes.




Quotes for: good


Quotes

Quotes for: good


The usual pretext of those who make others unhappy is that they do it for their own good.





Do not wait to be perfect to start something good.





Where all is well, there is no such thing as injustice. Justice and goodness are inseparable.





The best is the enemy of good.





To do good needs no consideration.





Delve within; within is the fountain of good, and it is always ready to bubble up, if you always delve.











Quotes for: idea


Quotes

Quotes about idea:


Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it's the only one we have.





The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.





If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
 / 





There is something real in ideas, through which the true are distinguished from the false.





An idea is a meteor.





Where does this idea come from? It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off.











Quotes for: evil


Quotes

Quotes for: evil


The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.





One of the most important and most difficult arts is to unlearn vice.





The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.





Antisthenes used to say that the most useful science was to unlearn evil.





What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.





Ignorance is the mother of all evils.











Quotes for: judgement


Quotes

Quotes for: judgement


Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.





True artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.





Haste in judgement is to look for guilt.





A judgment can be refuted, but never a prejudice.





It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.





Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.











Quotes for: Man


Quotes

Quotes about man, all human beings:


Man is the future of man.





No man is weak by choice.





Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.





The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.





Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.





I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.











Quotes

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg also said...


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





We all err, but everybody errs differently.





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.





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.





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






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












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