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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.

-Georg C. Lichtenberg

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Do Not Judge God's

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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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.

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

Ideas Too Are A Life And A World.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

In Every Man There Is Something Of All Men.

Never Undertake Anything Unless You Have The Heart To Ask Heaven's Blessing On Your Undertaking.

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

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

He Who Says He Hates All Kinds Of Flattery, And Says So In Earnest, Has Undoubtedly Not As Yet Become Acquainted With All Kinds Of It, Whether In Substance Or In Form.

He Who Understands The Wise Is Wise Already.

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

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

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

Never Undertake Anything For Which You Wouldn't Have The Courage To Ask The Blessings Of Heaven.

The Most Entertaining Surface On Earth Is The Human Face.

Actual Aristocracy Cannot Be Abolished By Any Law: All The Law Can Do Is Decree How It Is To Be Imparted And Who Is To Acquire It.

It Thunders, Howls, Roars, Hisses, Whistles, Blusters, Hums, Growls, Rumbles, Squeaks, Groans, Sings, Crackles, Cracks, Rattles, Flickers, Clicks, Snarls, Tumbles, Whimpers, Whines, Rustles, Murmurs, Crashes, Clucks, To Gurgle, Tinkles, Blows, Snores, Claps, To Lisp, To Cough, It Boils, To Scream, To Weep, To Sob, To Croak, To Stutter, To Lisp, To Coo, To Breathe, To Clash, To Bleat, To Neigh, To Grumble, To Scrape, To Bubble. These Words, And Others Like Them, Which Express Sounds Are More Than Mere Symbols: They Are A Kind Of Hieroglyphics For The Ear.

A Good Means To Discovery Is To Take Away Certain Parts Of A System To Find Out How The Rest Behaves.

There Are People Who Believe Everything Is Sane And Sensible That Is Done With A Solemn Face.

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.

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.

Non Cogitant, Ergo Non Sunt.

Man Is Always Partial And Is Quite Right To Be. Even Impartiality Is Partial.

The Thoughts Written On The Walls Of Madhouses By Their Inmates Might Be Worth Publicizing.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

You Believe I Run After The Strange Because I Do Not Know The Beautiful; No, It Is Because You Do Not Know The Beautiful That I Seek The Strange.

They Do Not Think, Therefore They Are Not.

To Err Is Human Also In So Far As Animals Seldom Or Never Err, Or At Least Only The Cleverest Of Them Do So.

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.

Reading Means Borrowing.

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

Men Still Have To Be Governed By Deception.

He Marvelled At The Fact That The Cats Had Two Holes Cut In Their Fur At Precisely The Spot Where Their Eyes Were.

What Most Clearly Characterizes True Freedom And Its True Employment Is Its Misemployment.

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.

After All, Is Our Idea Of God Anything More Than Personified Incomprehensibility?

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

Barbaric Accuracy - Whimpering Humility.

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.

Above All Things Expand The Frontiers Of Science: Without This The Rest Counts For Nothing.

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.

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

A Donkey Appears To Me Like A Horse Translated Into Dutch.

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

Why Does A Suppurating Lung Give So Little Warning And A Sore On The Finger So Much?

I Made The Journey To Knowledge Like Dogs Who Go For Walks With Their Masters, A Hundred Times Forward And Backward Over The Same Territory; And When I Arrived I Was Tired.

Too Much Is Unwholesome.

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

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.

Virtue By Premeditation Isn't Worth Much.

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.

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.

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.

The Great Trick Of Regarding Small Departures From The Truth As The Truth Itself - On Which Is Founded The Entire Integral Calculus - Is Also The Basis Of Our Witty Speculations, Where The Whole Thing Would Often Collapse If We Considered The Departures With Philosophical Rigour.

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

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

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.

If An Angel Were To Tell Us About His Philosophy, I Believe Many Of His Statements Might Well Sound Like '2 X 2= 13'.

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.

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

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?

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

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?

Nothing Reveals A Man's Character Better Than The Kind Of Joke At Which He Takes Offense.

The Most Dangerous Untruths Are Truths Slightly Distorted.

Body And Soul: A Horse Harnessed Beside An Ox.

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."

Everyone Is Perfectly Willing To Learn From Unpleasant Experience - If Only The Damage Of The First Lesson Could Be Repaired.

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.

If Nature Be Regarded As The Teacher And We Poor Human Beings As Her Pupils, The Human Race Presents A Very Curious Picture. We All Sit Together At A Lecture And Possess The Necessary Principles For Understanding It, Yet We Always Pay More Attention To The Chatter Of Our Fellow Students Than To The Lecturer's Discourse. Or, If Our Neighbor Copies Something Down, We Sneak It From Him, Stealing What He Himself May Have Heard Imperfectly, And Add It To Our Own Errors Of Spelling And Opinion.

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

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.

One Is Rarely An Impulsive Innovator After The Age Of Sixty, But One Can Still Be A Very Fine Orderly And Inventive Thinker. One Rarely Procreates Children At That Age, But One Is All The More Skilled At Educating Those Who Have Already Been Procreated, And Education Is Procreation Of Another Kind.

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

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

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.

The Noble Simplicity In The Works Of Nature Only Too Often Originates In The Noble Shortsightedness Of Him Who Observes It.

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

Love Is Blind, But Marriage Restores Its Sight.

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

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.

We Often Have Need Of A Profound Philosophy To Restore To Our Feelings Their Original State Of Innocence, To Find Our Way Out Of The Rubble Of Things Alien To Us, To Begin To Feel For Ourselves And To Speak Ourselves, And I Might Almost Say To Exist Ourselves.

You Can Make A Good Living From Soothsaying But Not From Truthsaying.

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

Erudition Can Produce Foliage Without Bearing Fruit.

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

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.

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.

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

I Am Always Grieved When A Man Of Real Talent Dies. The World Needs Such Men More Than Heaven Does.

Knowledge Acquired Too Rapidly And Without Being Personally Supplemented Is Never Very Productive.

The Greater Part Of Human Misery Is Caused By Indolence.

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?

There Were Honest People Long Before There Were Christians And There Are, God Be Praised, Still Honest People Where There Are No Christians. It Could Therefore Easily Be Possible That People Are Christians Because True Christianity Corresponds To What They Would Have Been Even If Christianity Did Not Exist.

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

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.

Just As The Performance Of The Vilest And Most Wicked Deeds Requires Spirit And Talent, So Even The Greatest Demand A Certain Insensitivity Which Under Other Circumstances We Would Call Stupidity.

Nothing Makes One Old So Quickly As The Ever-present Thought That One Is Growing Older.

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.

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

Everyone Who Has Ever Written Will Have Discovered That Writing Always Awakens Something Which, Though It Lay Within Us, We Failed Clearly To Recognize Before.

Imagine The World So Greatly Magnified That Particles Of Light Look Like Twenty-four-pound Cannon Balls.

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

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

Sickness Is Mankind's Greatest Defect.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Mathematical Analysis We Call X The Undetermined Part Of Line A: The Rest We Don't Call Y, As We Do In Common Life, But A-x. Hence Mathematical Language Has Great Advantages Over The Common Language.

He Swallowed A Lot Of Wisdom, But All Of It Seems To Have Gone Down The Wrong Way.

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.

If Another Messiah Was Born He Could Hardly Do So Much Good As The Printing-press.

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

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

Propositions On Which All Men Are In Agreement Are True: If They Are Not True We Have No Truth At All.

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

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.

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

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

There Are People Who Think That Everything One Does With A Serious Face Is Sensible.

It Is A Sure Evidence Of A Good Book If It Pleases Us More And More As We Grow Older.

All Mathematical Laws Which We Find In Nature Are Always Suspect To Me, In Spite Of Their Beauty. They Give Me No Pleasure. They Are Merely Auxiliaries. At Close Range It Is All Not True.

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.

It Is Hardly To Be Believed How Spiritual Reflections When Mixed With A Little Physics Can Hold People's Attention And Give Them A Livelier Idea Of God Than Do The Often Ill-applied Examples Of His Wrath.

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.

I Forget Most Of What I Read, Just As I Do Most Of What I Have Eaten, But I Know That Both Contribute No Less To The Conservation Of My Mind And My Body On That Account.

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.

Where The Frontier Of Science Once Was Is Now The Centre.

To Many People Virtue Consists Chiefly In Repenting Faults, Not In Avoiding Them.

Just As We Outgrow A Pair Of Trousers, We Outgrow Acquaintances, Libraries, Principles, Etc., At Times Before They're Worn Out And Times - And This Is The Worst Of All - Before We Have New Ones.

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.

He Who Is In Love With Himself Has At Least This Advantage - He Won't Encounter Many Rivals.

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.

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

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.

Man Is A Masterpiece Of Creation . . .

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.

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

One Must Judge Men Not By Their Opinions, But By What Their Opinions Have Made Of Them.

Honor Is Infinitely More Valuable Than Positions Of Honor.

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

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

We Cannot Remember Too Often That When We Observe Nature, And Especially The Ordering Of Nature, It Is Always Ourselves Alone We Are Observing.

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

The Feeling Of Health Can Only Be Gained By Sickness.

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

Some People Feel With Their Heads And Think With Their Hearts.

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.

Ask Yourself Always: How Can This Be Done Better?

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

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

Of All The Inventions Of Man I Doubt Whether Any Was More Easily Accomplished Than That Of A Heaven.

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.

To Live When You Do Not Want To Is Dreadful, But It Would Be Even More Terrible To Be Immortal When You Did Not Want To Be. As Things Are, However, The Whole Ghastly Burden Is Suspended From Me By A Thread Which I Can Cut In Two With A Penny-knife.

In Each Of Us There Is A Little Of All Of Us.

A Man Is Never More Serious Than When He Praise Himself.

One Can Live In This World On Soothsaying But Not On Truth Saying.

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.

One Cannot Demand Of A Scholar That He Show Himself A Scholar Everywhere In Society, But The Whole Tenor Of His Behavior Must None The Less Betray The Thinker, He Must Always Be Instructive, His Way Of Judging A Thing Must Even In The Smallest Matters Be Such That People Can See What It Will Amount To When, Quietly And Self-collected, He Puts This Power To Scholarly Use.

The Greatest Things In The World Are Brought About By Other Things Which We Count As Nothing: Little Causes We Overlook But Which At Length Accumulate.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

God Created Man In His Own Image, Says The Bible; Philosophers Reverse The Process: They Create God In Theirs.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

What Concerns Me Alone I Only Think, What Concerns My Friends I Tell Them, What Can Be Of Interest To Only A Limited Public I Write, And What The World Ought To Know Is Printed.

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

Affectation Is A Very Good Word When Someone Does Not Wish To Confess To What He Would None The Less Like To Believe Of Himself.

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

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

Personality Flaws

If All Else Fails, The Character Of A Man Can Be Recognized By Nothing So Surely As By A Jest Which He Takes Badly.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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