Georg C. Lichtenberg Book Quotations

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.

One of our forefathers must have read a forbidden book.

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

A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

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 that they have not convinced us.

If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

It is a sure evidence of a good book if it pleases us more and more as we grow older.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.

A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.

There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don't understand them; sold by people who don't understand them; bound, criticized and read by people who don't understand them; and now even written by people who don't understand them.

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

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