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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.

-Georg C. Lichtenberg

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A Writer Who Wishes

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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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.

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More From Georg C. Lichtenberg

A Book Which, Above All Others In The World, Should Be Forbidden, Is A Catalogue Of Forbidden Books.

Courage, Garrulousness And The Mob Are On Our Side. What More Do We Want?

Pain Warns Us Not To Exert Our Limbs To The Point Of Breaking Them. How Much Knowledge Would We Not Need To Recognize This By The Exercise Of Mere Reason.

The Worst Thing You Can Possibly Do Is Worrying And Thinking About What You Could Have Done.

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.

There Are Very Many People Who Read Simply To Prevent Themselves From Thinking.

We Are Obliged To Regard Many Of Our Original Minds As Crazy At Least Until We Have Become As Clever As They Are.

Perhaps In Time The So-called Dark Ages Will Be Thought Of As Including Our Own.

One's First Step In Wisdom Is To Question Everything - And One's Last Is To Come To Terms With Everything.

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

We Now Possess Four Principles Of Morality: 1) A Philosophical: Do Good For Its Own Sake, Out Of Respect For The Law; 2) A Religious: Do Good Because It Is God's Will, Out Of Love Of God; 3) A Human: Do Good Because It Will Promote Your Happiness, Out Of Self-love; 4) A Political: Do Good Because It Will Promote The Welfare Of The Society Of Which You Are A Part, Out Of Love Of Society Having Regard To Yourself. But Is This Not All One Single Principle, Only Viewed From Different Sides?

A Sure Sign Of A Good Book Is That You Like It More The Older You Get.

Everyone Is A Genius At Least Once A Year.

It Is In The Gift For Employing All The Vicissitudes Of Life To One's Own Advantage And To That Of One's Craft That A Large Part Of Genius Consists.

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.

It Is Astonishing How Much The Word Infinitely Is Misused: Everything Is Infinitely More Beautiful, Infinitely Better, Etc. The Concept Must Have Something Pleasing About It, Or Its Misuse Could Not Have Become So General.

The Sure Conviction That We Could If We Wanted To Is The Reason So Many Good Minds Are Idle.

The Construction Of The Universe Is Certainly Very Much Easier To Explain Than Is That Of The Plant.

Much Can Be Inferred About A Man From His Mistress: In Her One Beholds His Weaknesses And His Dreams.

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.

As Nations Improve, So Do Their Gods.

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.

What Is The Good Of Drawing Conclusions From Experience? I Don't Deny We Sometimes Draw The Right Conclusions, But Don't We Just As Often Draw The Wrong Ones?

The Natural Scientists Of The Previous Age Knew Less Than We Do And Believed They Were Very Close To The Goal: We Have Taken Very Great Steps In Its Direction And Now Discover We Are Still Very Far Away From It. With The Most Rational Philosophers An Increase In Their Knowledge Is Always Attended By An Increased Conviction Of Their Ignorance.

In The World We Live In, One Fool Makes Many Fools, But One Sage Only A Few Sages.

A Man Of Spirit Must Not Think Of The Word Difficulty As So Much As Existing. Away With It!

With God Thoughts Are Colors, With Us They Are Pigments-even The Most Abstract One May Be Accompanied By Physical Pain.

Do Not Take Too Artificial A View Of Mankind But Judge Them From A Natural Standpoint, Deeming Them Neither Over Good Nor Over Bad.

They Do Not Think, Therefore They Are Not.

How Few Friends Would Remain Friends If Each Could See The Sentiments Of The Other In Their Entirety.

It Is Almost Impossible To Carry The Torch Of Truth Through A Crowd Without Singeing Somebody's Beard.

The Girl Who Reveals Herself Heart And Soul To Her Friend Reveals The Secrets Of The Entire Sex; For Every Girl Is The Guardian Of The Feminine Mysteries.

Body And Soul: A Horse Harnessed Beside An Ox.

Do Not Say Hypothesis, And Even Less Theory: Say Way Of Thinking.

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.

To See Every Day How People Get The Name 'genius' Just As The Wood-lice In The Cellar The Name 'millipede'-not Because They Have That Many Feet, But Because Most People Don't Want To Count To 14-this Has Had The Result That I Don't Believe Anyone Any More Without Checking.

One Use Of Dreams Is That, Unprejudiced By Our Often Forced And Artificial Reflections, They Represent The Impartial Outcome Of Our Entire Being.

If Countries Were Named After The Words You First Hear When You Go There, England Would Have To Be Called Damn It.

Too Much Is Unwholesome.

The Celebrated Painter Gainsborough Got As Much Pleasure From Seeing Violins As From Hearing Them.

Cultivate That Kind Of Knowledge Which Enables Us To Discover For Ourselves In Case Of Need That Which Others Have To Read Or Be Told Of.

One Has To Do Something New In Order To See Something New.

He Who Is Enamored Of Himself Will At Least Have The Advantage Of Being Inconvenienced By Few Rivals.

Doubt Must Be No More Than Vigilance, Otherwise It Can Become Dangerous.

Some People Read Only Because They Are Too Lazy To Think.

If There Were Only Turnips And Potatoes In The World, Someone Would Complain That Plants Grow The Wrong Way.

Nowadays Beautiful Women Are Counted Among The Talents Of Their Husbands.

Reason Now Gazes Above The Realm Of The Dark But Warm Feelings As The Alpine Peaks Do Above The Clouds. They Behold The Sun More Clearly And Distinctly, But They Are Cold And Unfruitful.

So-called Professional Mathematicians Have, In Their Reliance On The Relative Incapacity Of The Rest Of Mankind, Acquired For Themselves A Reputation For Profundity Very Similar To The Reputation For Sanctity Possessed By Theologians.

Deliberate Virtue Is Never Worth Much: The Virtue Of Feeling Or Habit Is The Thing.

We Accumulate Our Opinions At An Age When Our Understanding Is At Its Weakest.

We Have No Words For Speaking Of Wisdom To The Stupid. He Who Understands The Wise Is Wise Already.

I Have Remarked Very Clearly That I Am Often Of One Opinion When I Am Lying Down And Of Another When I Am Standing Up.

It Often Takes More Courage To Change One's Opinion Than To Stick To It.

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.

Cautiousness In Judgment Is Nowadays To Be Recommended To Each And Every One: If We Gained Only One Incontestable Truth Every Ten Years From Each Of Our Philosophical Writers The Harvest We Reaped Would Be Sufficient.

It Is We Who Are The Measure Of What Is Strange And Miraculous: If We Sought A Universal Measure The Strange And Miraculous Would Not Occur And All Things Would Be Equal.

Most Men Of Education Are More Superstitious Than They Admit - Nay, Than They Think.

A Man Always Writes Absolutely Well Whenever He Writes In His Own Manner, But The Wigmaker Who Tries To Write Like Gellert ... Writes Badly.

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.

It Is Too Bad If You Have To Do Everything Upon Reflection And Can't Do Anything From Early Habit.

If People Should Ever Start To Do Only What Is Necessary Millions Would Die Of Hunger.

Honest Unaffected Distrust Of Human Abilities Under All Circumstances Is The Surest Sign Of Strength Of Mind.

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.

What You Have Been Obliged To Discover By Yourself Leaves A Path In Your Mind Which You Can Use Again When The Need Arises.

To Read Means To Borrow; To Create Out Of One S Readings Is Paying Off One's Debts.

I Have Never Yet Met Anyone Who Did Not Think It Was An Agreeable Sensation To Cut Tinfoil With Scissors.

Delicacy In Woman Is Strength.

Ask Yourself Always: How Can This Be Done Better?

How Did Mankind Ever Come By The Idea Of Liberty? What A Grand Thought It Was!

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.

What We Are Able To Judge With Feeling Is Very Little; The Rest Is All Prejudice And Complaisance.

What We Have To Discover For Ourselves Leaves Behind In Our Mind A Pathway That Can Be Used On Another Occasion.

A Handful Of Soldiers Is Always Better Than A Mouthful Of Arguments.

The Human Tendency To Regard Little Things As Important Has Produced Very Many Great Things.

Some People Come By The Name Of Genius In The Same Way That Certain Insects Come By The Name Of Centipede -- Not Because They Have A Hundred Feet, But Because Most People Can't Count Above 14.

First There Is A Time When We Believe Everything, Then For A Little While We Believe With Discrimination, Then We Believe Nothing Whatever, And Then We Believe Everything Again - And, Moreover, Give Reasons Why We Believe.

A Good Method Of Discovery Is To Imagine Certain Members Of A System Removed And Then See How What Is Left Would Behave: For Example, Where Would We Be If Iron Were Absent From The World: This Is An Old Example.

Be Attentive, Feel Nothing In Vain, Measure And Compare: This Is The Whole Law Of Philosophy.

We Have To Believe That Everything Has A Cause, As The Spider Spins Its Web In Order To Catch Flies. But It Does This Before It Knows There Are Such Things As Flies.

The Ordinary Man Is Ruined By The Flesh Lusting Against The Spirit; The Scholar By The Spirit Lusting Too Much Against The Flesh.

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.

Bad Writers Are Those Who Try To Express Their Own Feeble Ideas In The Language Of Good Ones.

When A Book And A Head Collide And A Hollow Sound Is Heard, Must It Always Have Come From The Book?

The Wisdom Of Providence Is As Much Revealed In The Rarity Of Genius, As In The Circumstance That Not Everyone Is Deaf Or Blind.

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 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 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.

Nothing Is More Conducive To Peace Of Mind Than Not Having Any Opinion At All.

It Is Said That Truth Comes From The Mouths Of Fools And Children: I Wish Every Good Mind Which Feels An Inclination For Satire Would Reflect That The Finest Satirist Always Has Something Of Both In Him.

A Good Metaphor Is Something Even The Police Should Keep An Eye On.

Virtue By Premeditation Isn't Worth Much.

Most Subjects At Universities Are Taught For No Other Purpose Than That They May Be Re-taught When The Students Become Teachers.

If You Are Going To Build Something In The Air It Is Always Better To Build Castles Than Houses Of Cards.

God Creates The Animals, Man Creates Himself.

Human Pride Is A Strange Thing; It Cannot Easily Be Suppressed, And If You Stop Up Hole A Will Peep Forth Again In A Twinkling From Another Hole B, And If This Is Closed It Is Ready To Come Out At Hole C, And So On.

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.

To Make A Vow Is A Greater Sin Than To Break One.

It Is A Dangerous Thing For The Perfecting Of Our Minds To Gain Applause By Works That Do Not Call Forth The Whole Of Our Energies; For In That Case One Generally Comes To A Standstill.

Food Probably Has A Very Great Influence On The Condition Of Men. Wine Exercises A More Visible Influence, Food Does It More Slowly But Perhaps Just As Surely. Who Knows If A Well-prepared Soup Was Not Responsible For The Pneumatic Pump Or A Poor One For A War?

Some Theories Are Good For Nothing Except To Be Argued About.

A Book Is A Mirror: If An Ape Looks Into It An Apostle Is Hardly Likely To Look Out.

The Grave Is Still The Best Shelter Against The Storms Of Destiny.

The Fly That Doesn't Want To Be Swatted Is Most Secure When It Lights On The Fly-swatter.

I Am Confident Of My Ability To Demonstrate That One Can Sometimes Believe In Something And Yet Not Believe In It. Nothing Is Less Fathomable Than The Systems That Motivate Our Actions.

Nothing Puts A Greater Obstacle In The Way Of The Progress Of Knowledge Than Thinking That One Knows What One Does Not Yet Know.

I Am Grateful That I Am Not As Judgmental As All Those Censorious, Self-righteous People Around Me. In Each Of Us There Is A Little Of All Of Us.

I Would Give Something To Know For Whose Sake Precisely Those Deeds Were Really Done Which Report Says Were Done For The Fatherland.

The Man Was Such An Intellectual He Was Of Almost No Use.

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.

Delight At Having Understood A Very Abstract And Obscure System Leads Most People To Believe In The Truth Of What It Demonstrates.

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.

If All Mankind Were Suddenly To Practice Honesty, Many Thousands Of People Would Be Sure To Starve.

With Prophecies The Commentator Is Often A More Important Man Than The Prophet.

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 Are Made.

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.

Man Is So Perfectable And Corruptible He Can Become A Fool Through Good Sense.

Fools And Foolishness

If Brandy Was Made Out Of Sparrows There Would Soon Be No Sparrows.

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.

Probably No Invention Came More Easily To Man Than Heaven.

There Is A Great Difference Between Believing In Something And Believing In It Again.

Believing In Something

To Make Astute People Believe One Is What One Is Not Is, In Most Cases, Harder Than Actually To Become What One Wishes To Appear.

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.

A Person Reveals His Character By Nothing So Clearly As The Joke He Resents.

Personality Flaws

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.

People Who Never Have Any Time On Their Hands Are Those Who Do The Least.

If We Thought More For Ourselves We Would Have Very Many More Bad Books And Very Many More Good Ones.

One Of The Greatest Creations Of The Human Mind Is The Art Of Reviewing Books Without Having Read Them.

When An Acquaintance Goes By I Often Step Back From My Window, Not So Much To Spare Him The Effort Of Acknowledging Me As To Spare Myself The Embarrassment Of Seeing That He Has Not Done So.

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.

Theologians Always Try To Turn The Bible Into A Book Without Common Sense.

The Excuses We Make To Ourselves When We Want To Do Something Are Excellent Material For Soliloquies, For They Are Rarely Made Except When We Are Alone, And Are Very Often Made Aloud.

Many Things About Our Bodies Would Not Seem To Us So Filthy And Obscene If We Did Not Have The Idea Of Nobility In Our Heads.

People Often Become Scholars For The Same Reason They Become Soldiers: Simply Because They Are Unfit For Any Other Station. Their Right Hand Has To Earn Them A Livelihood; One Might Say They Lie Down Like Bears In Winter And Seek Sustenance From Their Paws.

It Not Seldom Happens That In The Purposeless Rovings And Wanderings Of The Imagination We Hunt Down Such Game As Can Be Put To Use By Our Purposeful Philosophy In Its Well-ordered Household.

To Do Just The Opposite Is Also A Form Of Imitation.

The Proof That Man Is The Noblest Of All Creatures Is That No Other Creature Has Ever Denied It.

Man Is To Be Found In Reason, God In The Passions.

Is It Not Strange That Mankind Should So Willingly Battle For Religion And So Unwillingly Live According To Its Precepts?

It Is With Epigrams As With Other Inventions; The Best Ones Annoy Us Because We Didn't Think Of Them Ourselves.

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.

Men Still Have To Be Governed By Deception.

No People Are More Conceited Than Those Who Depict Their Own Feelings, Especially If They Happen To Have A Little Prose At Their Command For The Occasion.

Man Can Acquire Accomplishments Or He Can Become An Animal, Whichever He Wants. God Makes The Animals, Man Makes Himself.

It Is In Most Cases More Difficult To Make Intelligent People Believe That You Are What You Are Not, Than Really To Become What You Would Appear To Be.

Perhaps Pure Reason Without Heart Would Never Have Thought Of God.

We Say That Someone Occupies An Official Position, Whereas It Is The Official Position That Occupies Him.

Erudition Can Produce Foliage Without Bearing Fruit.

The Most Dangerous Untruths Are Truths Slightly Distorted.

I Am Convinced We Do Not Only Love Ourselves In Others But Hate Ourselves In Others Too.

To Write Brashly About Some Things, It Is Almost Necessary Not To Know Much About Them.

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.

People Who Have Read A Good Deal Rarely Make Great Discoveries. I Do Not Say This In Excuse Of Laziness, But Because Invention Presupposes An Extensive Independent Contemplation Of Things.

The More Experiences And Experiments Accumulate In The Exploration Of Nature, The More Precarious The Theories Become. But It Is Not Always Good To Discard Them Immediately On This Account. For Every Hypothesis Which Once Was Sound Was Useful For Thinking Of Previous Phenomena In The Proper Interrelations And For Keeping Them In Context. We Ought To Set Down Contradictory Experiences Separately, Until Enough Have Accumulated To Make Building A New Structure Worthwhile.

If It Were True What In The End Would Be Gained? Nothing But Another Truth. Is This Such A Mighty Advantage? We Have Enough Old Truths Still To Digest, And Even These We Would Be Quite Unable To Endure If We Did Not Sometimes Flavor Them With Lies.

With Most Men, Unbelief In One Thing Springs From Blind Belief In Another.

There Are People Who Can Believe Anything They Wish. What Lucky Creatures!

People Nowadays Have Such High Hopes Of America And The Political Conditions Obtaining There That One Might Say The Desires, At Least The Secret Desires, Of All Enlightened Europeans Are Deflected To The West, Like Our Magnetic Needles.

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.

What A Blessing It Would Be If We Could Open And Shut Our Ears...as Easily As We Open And Shut Our Eyes.

A Good Part Of The Fame Of Most Celebrated Men Is Due To The Shortsightedness Of Their Admirers

The Drive To Propagate Our Race Has Also Propagated A Lot Of Other Things

It Is A Question Whether, When We Break A Murderer On The Wheel, We Do Not Fall Into The Error A Child Makes When It Hits The Chair It Has Bumped Into.

Everyone Is A Genius At Least Once A Year. The Real Geniuses Simply Have Their Bright Ideas Closer Together.

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.

It Is Certainly Not A Matter Of Indifference Whether I Learn Something Without Effort Or Finally Arrive At It Myself Through My System Of Thought. In The Latter Case Everything Has Roots, In The Former It Is Merely Superficial.

Every Condition Of The Soul Has Its Own Sign And Expression...so You Will See How Hard It Is To Seem Original Without Being So.

Whenever He Composes A Critical Review, I Have Been Told, He Gets An Enormous Erection.

To Do The Opposite Of Something Is Also A Form Of Imitation, Namely An Imitation Of Its Opposite.

That Man Is The Noblest Creature May Also Be Inferred From The Fact That No Other Creature Has Yet Contested This Claim.

What Is Called An Acute Knowledge Of Human Nature Is Mostly Nothing But The Observer's Own Weaknesses Reflected Back From Others.

What I Do Not Like About Our Definitions Of Genius Is That There Is In Them Nothing Of The Day Of Judgment, Nothing Of Resounding Through Eternity And Nothing Of The Footsteps Of The Almighty.

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.

It Is A Great Shame; Most Of Our Words Are Misused Tools / Which Often Still Smell Of The Mud In Which Previous Owners / Desecrated Them.

Diogenes, Filthily Attired, Paced Across The Splendid Carpets In Plato's Dwelling. Thus, Said He, Do I Trample On The Pride Of Plato. Yes, Plato Replied, But Only With Another Kind Of Pride.

There Is No Greater Impediment To Progress In The Sciences Than The Desire To See It Take Place Too Quickly.

In Every Man There Is Something Of All Men.

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.

I Forget The Greater Part Of What I Read, But All The Same It Nourishes My Mind.

How Happily Some People Would Live If They Troubled Themselves As Little About Other People's Business As About Their Own.

The American Who First Discovered Columbus Made A Bad Discovery.

Do Not Judge God's World From Your Own. Trim Your Own Hedge As You Wish And Plant Your Flowers In The Patterns You Can Understand, But Do Not Judge The Garden Of Nature From Your Little Window Box.

Barbaric Accuracy - Whimpering Humility.

Before We Blame We Should First See Whether We Cannot Excuse.

Before One Blames, One Should Always Find Out Whether One Cannot Excuse. To Discover Little Faults Has Been Always The Particularity Of Such Brains That Are A Little Or Not At All Above The Average. The Superior Ones Keep Quiet Or Say Something Against The Whole And The Great Minds Transform Without Blaming.

A Vacuum Of Ideas Affects People Differently Than A Vacuum Of Air, Otherwise Readers Of Books Would Be Constantly Collapsing.

Nowadays Three Witty Turns Of Phrase And A Lie Make A Writer.

Rational Free Spirits Are The Light Brigade Who Go On Ahead And Reconnoiter The Ground Which The Heavy Brigade Of The Orthodox Will Eventually Occupy.

Libraries Can In General Be Too Narrow Or Too Wide For The Soul.

A Schoolteacher Or Professor Cannot Educate Individuals, He Educates Only Species.

He Who Understands The Wise Is Wise Already.

Even Truth Needs To Be Clad In New Garments If It Is To Appeal To A New Age.

Everyone Should Study At Least Enough Philosophy And Belles-lettres To Make His Sexual Experience More Delectable.

The Book Which Most Deserved To Be Banned Would Be A Catalog Of Banned Books.

I Cannot Say Whether Things Will Get Better If We Change; What I Can Say Is They Must Change If They Are To Get Better.

As The Few Adepts In Such Things Well Know, Universal Morality Is To Be Found In Little Everyday Penny-events Just As Much As In Great Ones. There Is So Much Goodness And Ingenuity In A Raindrop That An Apothecary Wouldn't Let It Go For Less Than Half-a-crown.

Good Taste Is Either That Which Agrees With My Taste Or That Which Subjects Itself To The Rule Of Reason. From This We Can See How Useful It Is To Employ Reason In Seeking Out The Laws Of Taste.

With A Pen In My Hand I Have Successfully Stormed Bulwarks From Which Others Armed With Sword And Excommunication Have Been Repulsed.

Superstition Originates Among Ordinary People In The Early And All Too Zealous Instruction They Receive In Religion: They Hear Of Mysteries, Miracles, Deeds Of The Devil, And Consider It Very Probable That Things Of This Sort Could Occur In Everything Anywhere.

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