“There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.”

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

E 59
Variant translation: There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible...
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)
Context: There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. … It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth … into a liar — that I call an achievement.

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 137

German scientist, satirist 1742–1799

Edmund Whalen (1958) roman-catholic clergyman

Source: Bishop-elect Edmund J. Whalen Fluently Reaches the Faithful https://cny.org/stories/bishop-elect-edmund-j-whalen-fluently-reaches-the-faithful,20259 (December 4, 2019)

“But he who knows what insanity is, is sane; whereas insanity can no more be sensible of its own existence, than blindness can see itself.”
Sanus est, qui scit quid sit insania, quippe insania scire se non potest, non magis quam caecitas se videre.

Apuleius book Apologia

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it’s done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 2, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin” (p. 23)

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

“We know only too well that all over the world, from wayward undergraduate to B. B. C. producer to publisher's reader there are people, otherwise sensible and sane, people who would not believe in six-headed cats and blood-curdling spectral monsters, who yet read some folly about Noah's ark or Atlantis or cataclysmic world-tides, and say, with a contented sigh, "There may be something in it, you know."”

Glyn Daniel (1914–1986) British archaeologist

As quoted in Sumathi Ramaswamy: The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (University of California Press, 2004) p. 2

“"What is the work of a Master?" said a solemn-faced visitor.
"To teach people to laugh," said the Master gravely.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 85

“Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 24

“[I]nstitutions are strong; it turns out you don't need a lot of sensible or even sane leadership in the White House.”

William Kristol (1952) American writer

Interview with the Octavian Report https://octavianreport.com/article/william-kristol-fix-american-politics/2/ (2018)
2010s, 2018

“Then I became an altar boy because of the solemn face, but I got thrown out at fourteen for laughing, because the priest used to mumble everything except the church plate takings.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

The Times (2 March 2002)

“I do not love the Sabbath,
The soapsuds and the starch,
The troops of solemn people
Who to Salvation march.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The Boy out of Church".
Country Sentiment (1920)
Context: I do not love the Sabbath,
The soapsuds and the starch,
The troops of solemn people
Who to Salvation march.
I take my book, I take my stick
On the Sabbath day,
In woody nooks and valleys
I hide myself away.
To ponder there in quiet
God's Universal Plan,
Resolved that church and Sabbath
Were never made for man.

“There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 137

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