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The Journalists Have Constructed For Themselves A Little Wooden Chapel, Which They Also Call The Temple Of Fame, In Which They Put Up And Take Down Portraits All Day Long And Make Such A Hammering You Can't Hear Yourself Speak.

-Georg C. Lichtenberg

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The Journalists Have Constructed

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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The Journalists Have Constructed For Themselves A Little Wooden Chapel, Which They Also Call The Temple Of Fame, In Which They Put Up And Take Down Portraits All Day Long And Make Such A Hammering You Can't Hear Yourself Speak.

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Much Reading Has Brought Upon Us A Learned Barbarism.

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

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.

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

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

Self Improvement

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Men Still Have To Be Governed By Deception.

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.

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.

Honor Is Infinitely More Valuable Than Positions Of Honor.

Ask Yourself Always: How Can This Be Done Better?

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

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?

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

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 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.

Perseverance Can Lend The Appearance Of Dignity And Grandeur To Many Actions, Just As Silence In Company Affords Wisdom And Apparent Intelligence To A Stupid Person.

Erudition Can Produce Foliage Without Bearing Fruit.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

They Do Not Think, Therefore They Are Not.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!'

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.

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.

In Every Man There Is Something Of All Men.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Doubt Everything At Least Once, Even The Sentence "two Times Two Is Four."

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

The American Who First Discovered Columbus Made A Bad Discovery.

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

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.

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.

The Most Dangerous Untruths Are Truths Slightly Distorted.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

He Who Understands The Wise Is Wise Already.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Barbaric Accuracy - Whimpering Humility.

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.

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

Just As There Are Polysyllabic Words That Say Very Little, So There Are Also Monosyllabic Words Of Infinite Meaning.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

God Creates The Animals, Man Creates Himself.

Once We Know Our Weaknesses They Cease To Do Us Any Harm.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Great Men Too Make Mistakes, And Many Among Them Do It So Often That One Is Almost Tempted To Call Them Little Men.

One Might Call Habit A Moral Friction: Something That Prevents The Mind From Gliding Over Things But Connects It With Them And Makes It Hard For It To Free Itself From Them.

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

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

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

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.

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

Too Much Is Unwholesome.

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.

The Feeling Of Health Can Only Be Gained By Sickness.

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.

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

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

The Most Entertaining Surface On Earth Is The Human Face.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

Brevity: To Say At Once Whatever Is To Be Said.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Popular Presentation Today Is All Too Often That Which Puts The Mob In A Position To Talk About Something Without Understanding It.

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.

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

As Nations Improve, So Do Their Gods.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Is It So Unjust That A Man Should Leave The World By The Same Gate Through Which He Entered It?

Sickness Is Mankind's Greatest Defect.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Reading Means Borrowing.

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

Fools And Foolishness

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.

One Of Our Forefathers Must Have Read A Forbidden Book.

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

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

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.

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

The Greater Part Of Human Misery Is Caused By Indolence.

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.

If This Is Philosophy It Is At Any Rate A Philosophy That Is Not In Its Right Mind.

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.

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

Ambition And Suspicion Always Go Together.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Look Upon Book Reviews As An Infantile Disease Which New-born Books Are Subject To.

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

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

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

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