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? — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards. — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
One can live in this world on soothsaying but not on truth saying. — Georg C. Lichtenberg Copy Share Image
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 Image
