More from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  1. What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.
  2. To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.
  3. People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the s…
  4. The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
  5. 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 t…
  6. The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.
  7. 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.
  8. The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

All Georg Christoph Lichtenberg quotes