Georg C. Lichtenberg

To be content with life -- or to live merrily, rather --all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?

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.

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

Ideas too are a life and a world.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.