To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
It is a sure evidence of a good book if it pleases us more and more as we grow older. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
Everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
The wisdom of providence is as much revealed in the rarity of genius, as in the circumstance that not everyone is deaf or blind. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
It is a great shame; most of our words are misused tools / which often still smell of the mud in which previous owners… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
To live when you do not want to is dreadful, but it would be even more terrible to be immortal when you did not… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
He who says he hates all kinds of flattery, and says so in earnest, has undoubtedly not as yet become acquainted with all kinds… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of,… — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must at last return — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share
