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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.

-Georg C. Lichtenberg

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It Is Certainly Not

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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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.

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More From Georg C. Lichtenberg

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

One Of Our Forefathers Must Have Read A Forbidden Book.

Non Cogitant, Ergo Non Sunt.

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.

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

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

Man Is A Masterpiece Of Creation . . .

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Reading Means Borrowing.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

Virtue By Premeditation Isn't Worth Much.

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

Ambition And Suspicion Always Go Together.

He Who Understands The Wise Is Wise Already.

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

He Was Always Smoothing And Polishing Himself, And In The End He Became Blunt Before He Was Sharp.

Self Improvement

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Personality Flaws

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.

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

In Every Man There Is Something Of All Men.

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.

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.

If We Make A Couple Of Discoveries Here And There We Need Not Believe Things Will Go On Like This For Ever. Just As We Hit Water When We Dig In The Earth, So We Discover The Incomprehensible Sooner Or Later.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Erudition Can Produce Foliage Without Bearing Fruit.

He Who Says He Hates Every Kind Of Flattery, And Says It In Earnest, Certainly Does Not Yet Know Every Kind Of Flattery.

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

Universal Morality Is To Be Found In Little Everyday Penny-events Just As Much As In Great Ones.

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

There Are Many Who Believe That 'marriage Is Not A Word - It Is A Sentence!' Whether You Are Indeed 'married' Or If You Are 'single', I Am Sure That Funny Quotes On Weddings And Marriages Always Tend To Put A Wicked Smile To The Face. It Is Often Said That 'people Who Are Married Are Often Desperate To Get Out Of It And People Who Are Single Can't Wait To Get In!'

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.

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.

A Man Has Virtues Enough If He Deserves Pardon For His Faults On Account Of Them.

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.

Body And Soul: A Horse Harnessed Beside An Ox.

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

Ask Yourself Always: How Can This Be Done Better?

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

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.

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

As Soon As You Know A Man To Be Blind, You Imagine That You Can See It From His Back.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Man Loves Company - Even If It Is Only That Of A Small Burning Candle.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Never Trust A Man Who Lays His Hand On His Heart When He Assures You Of Anything.

I Have Often Noticed That When People Come To Understand A Mathematical Proposition In Some Other Way Than That Of The Ordinary Demonstration, They Promptly Say, "oh, I See. That's How It Must Be." This Is A Sign That They Explain It To Themselves From Within Their Own System.

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.

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

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

The Rules Of Grammar Are Mere Human Statutes, Which Is Why When He Speaks Out Of The Possessed The Devil Himself Speaks Bad Latin.

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.

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."

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

Love Is Blind, But Marriage Restores Its Sight.

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.

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

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

Sickness Is Mankind's Greatest Defect.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

Superficial Things

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

Be Wary Of Passing The Judgment: Obscure. To Find Something Obscure Poses No Difficult, Elephants And Poodles Find Many Things Obscure.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

How Might Letters Be Most Efficiently Copied So That The Blind Might Read Them With Their Fingers?

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

One Should Never Trust A Person Who, While Assuring You Of Something, Puts His Hands On His Heart.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The Most Successful Tempters And Thus The Most Dangerous Are The Deluded Deluders.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Feeling Of Health Can Only Be Gained By Sickness.

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

Men Still Have To Be Governed By Deception.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

No Despotism Is So Formidable As That Of A Religion Or A Scientific System.

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

Ideas Too Are A Life And A World.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

God Creates The Animals, Man Creates Himself.

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 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.

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

Many Are Less Fortunate Than You' May Not Be A Roof To Live Under, But It Will Serve To Retire Beneath In The Event Of A Shower.

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?

Marriage, In Contrast To The Flu, Starts With A Fever And Ends With The Chills.

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.

Delicacy In Woman Is Strength.

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.

We Judge Nothing So Hastily As Character, And Yet There Is Nothing Over Which We Should Be More Cautious.... I Have Always Found That The So-called Bad People Improve On Closer Acquaintance, While The Good Fall Off.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

God: Personified Incomprehensibility.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Do Not Commence Your Exercises In Philosophy In Those Regions Where An Error Can Deliver You Over To The Executioner.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It Is Strange That Only Extraordinary Men Make The Discoveries, Which Later Appear So Easy And Simple.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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?

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.

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

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

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