Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

German Physicist, Writer, Satirist and Anglophile

"The feeling of health can only be gained by sickness."

"The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter."

"The grave is still the best shelter against the storms of destiny"

"The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special."

"The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen."

"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."

"The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself."

"The highest point to which a weak but experienced mind can rise is detecting the weakness of better men."

"The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak."

"The lower classes of men, though they do not think it worthwhile to record what they perceive, nevertheless perceive everything that is worth noting; the difference between them and a man of learning often consists in nothing more than the latter's facility for expression."

"The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use."

"The most accomplished monkey cannot draw a monkey, this only man can do; just as it is also only man who regards his ability to do this as a distinct merit."

"The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect."

"The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority."

"The most successful tempters, and thus the most dangerous, are the deluded deluders."

"The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, bread-bread-fame or fame-fame-bread."

"The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it."

"The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing."

"The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it."

"The second sight possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers... That is also why in all countries women are more prone to utter prophecies."

"The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle."

"The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing."

"Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense."

"There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. ... It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar — that I call an achievement."

"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."

"There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible."

"There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points "born" and "died" farther away from one another... The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers."

"There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking."

"There can hardly be stranger wares in the world than books: printed by people who do not understand them; sold by people who do not understand them; bound, reviewed and read by people who do not understand them; and now even written by people who do not understand them."

"There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven."

"There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly."

"There is no mistaking a good book when one meets it. It is like falling in love."

"There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them."

"There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where."

"Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them."

"To be content with life — or to live merrily, rather — all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow."

"To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite."

"To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so."

"To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject."

"To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one."

"To make clever people believe we are what we are not is in most instances harder than really to become what we want to seem to be."

"To read means to borrow; to create out of one's readings is paying off one's debts"

"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."

"Too much is unwholesome."

"Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much."

"We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy — at least until we have become as clever as they are."

"We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms."

"We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing."

"We do not think good metaphors are anything very important, but I think that a good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on."

"We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already."