9 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes on Morality

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg quotes on morality

9. 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.

12. 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.

83. Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

92. 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.

111. 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.

132. If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

138. Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessing of heaven.

149. The expression divine service should cease to be applied to church attendance and be applied instead to good deeds.

153. The late M. who had a Catholic maid, once told me entirely bona fide: This person is a Catholic, it is true, but she is an honest, good soul. Recently she committed a perjury on my behalf.