A biography for Georg C. Lichtenberghasn’t been written yet.
“It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.”
“To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.”
“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.”
“Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.”
“The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.”
“Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.”
“We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.”
“There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.”
“We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.”
“Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.”
“The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.”
“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.”
“Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.”
“With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.”
“Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.”
“He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.”
“A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.”
“It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.”
“Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.”
“Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.”