Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Man

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was German scientist, satirist. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: 274   quotes 3   likes

“Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

F 49
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

God , Animals

“Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

K 40
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

Love

“Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was — nobody any longer wanted to be that.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

C 36
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook C (1772-1773)

Dead

“Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

B 37 "Speech of a suicide composed shortly before the act."
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

Nature

“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.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

B 12
Variant translation: Everyone has a moral backside, which he does not show except in case of need and which he covers as long as possible with the breeches of respectability.
As quoted in Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten [Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious] (1905) by Sigmund Freud, as translated by James Strachey (1960), p. 100
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

“Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

F 78
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

“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.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

J 115
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)

Drawing , Perfection

“Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

L 34
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

“Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

F 88
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Dreams

“If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

K 46
Variant translation: A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

“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.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

J 249
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)

“With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

H 23
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook H (1784-1788)

“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.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

L 98
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

“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.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

C 23
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook C (1772-1773)

Understanding , Learning , Appearance , Science

“A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

F 69
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Fools , Sense , Perfection

“That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

D 58
The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)

“Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

K 21
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

God , Passion