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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.

-Georg C. Lichtenberg

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There Is No More

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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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.

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

The World Is A Body Common To All Men, Changes To It Bring About A Change In The Souls Of All Men Who Are Turned Towards That Part Of It At That Moment.

The 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.

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.

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

Self Improvement

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.

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.

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

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.

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."

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

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

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

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

God: Personified Incomprehensibility.

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

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

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

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.

Ambition And Suspicion Always Go Together.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Those Who Never Have Time Do Least

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

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.

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

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

Before One Blames, One Should Always Find Out Whether One Cannot Excuse.

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

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

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 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.

Honor Is Infinitely More Valuable Than Positions Of Honor.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Men Still Have To Be Governed By Deception.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Delicacy In Woman Is Strength.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

In Every Man There Is Something Of All Men.

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

Man Is Perhaps Half Mind And Half Matter In The Same Way As The Polyp Is Half Plant And Half Animal. The Strangest Creatures Are Always Found On The Border Lines Of Species.

The Course Of The Seasons Is A Piece Of Clockwork, With A Cuckoo To Call When It Is Spring.

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

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

The Most Dangerous Untruths Are Truths Slightly Distorted.

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

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

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

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 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.

Reading Means Borrowing.

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

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

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.

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

The Feeling Of Health Can Only Be Gained By Sickness.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Ideas Too Are A Life And A World.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Ask Yourself Always: How Can This Be Done Better?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Too Much Is Unwholesome.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

Body And Soul: A Horse Harnessed Beside An Ox.

Non Cogitant, Ergo Non Sunt.

The Greater Part Of Human Misery Is Caused By Indolence.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!'

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

They Do Not Think, Therefore They Are Not.

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.

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

Man Is A Masterpiece Of Creation . . .

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.

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

Personality Flaws

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

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.

As Nations Improve, So Do Their Gods.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Everyone Is A Genius At Least Once A Year.

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