Georg C. Lichtenberg Men Quotations

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

Men still have to be governed by deception.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

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.

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.

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.

One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

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.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

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

Some men come by the name of genius in the same way as an insect comes by the name of centipede - not because it has a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen

It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.

I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.

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.

Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.

There is something in the character of every man which cannot be broken in--the skeleton of his character; and to try to alter this is like training a sheep for draught purposes.

A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.

Is it so unjust that a man should leave the world by the same gate through which he entered it?

Great men too make mistakes, and many among them do it so often that one is almost tempted to call them little men.

Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.

Probably no invention came more easily to man than heaven.

Nowadays beautiful women are counted among the talents of their husbands.

Truly, men make too little use of their lives; and so it is no wonder that the world should still be in such a poor way.

He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

Man is a masterpiece of creation . . .

Man is a masterpiece of creation, if only because no amount of determinism can prevent him from believing that he acts as a free being.

The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

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

Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.

A man has virtues enough if he deserves pardon for his faults on account of them.

God creates the animals, man creates himself.

Many a man who is willing to be shot for his belief in a miracle would have doubted, had he been present at the miracle itself.

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

Man is perhaps half mind and half matter in the same way as the polyp is half plant and half animal. The strangest creatures are always found on the border lines of species.

The world is a body common to all men, changes to it bring about a change in the souls of all men who are turned towards that part of it at that moment.

The fear of death which is imprinted in men is at the same time a great expedient Heaven employs to hinder them from many misdeeds: many things are left undone for fear of imperiling one's life or health.

A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as so much as existing. Away with it!

A good part of the fame of most celebrated men is due to the shortsightedness of their admirers

Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think.

The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit; the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.

As soon as you know a man to be blind, you imagine that you can see it from his back.

In every man there is something of all men.

Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything.

One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them.

Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.