G. C. Lichtenberg
@wastebooks.bsky.social
Daily extracts from The Waste Books by G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799).
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G. C. Lichtenberg
@wastebooks.bsky.social
· Nov 23
"I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that that I have taken up my pen, but merely to annoy them, and to bestow courage on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us."
Reposted by G. C. Lichtenberg
"The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak."
December 10, 2024 at 7:01 AM
"The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak."
Reposted by G. C. Lichtenberg
"I have seen that fervent ambition and mistrustfulness always go together."
January 11, 2025 at 9:19 AM
"I have seen that fervent ambition and mistrustfulness always go together."
"If I had not written this book then a thousand years hence between six and seven in the evening people would in many a town in Germany be talking about quite different things from what they will in fact be talking about..."
February 4, 2025 at 7:35 AM
"If I had not written this book then a thousand years hence between six and seven in the evening people would in many a town in Germany be talking about quite different things from what they will in fact be talking about..."
"This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature."
February 3, 2025 at 7:25 AM
"This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature."
"I believe we would always bloom and blossom as youth does if we could be always so carefree; or is it, on the contrary, blooming and blossoming that makes one carefree?"
February 2, 2025 at 8:57 AM
"I believe we would always bloom and blossom as youth does if we could be always so carefree; or is it, on the contrary, blooming and blossoming that makes one carefree?"
"If Heaven should find it useful and necessary to produce a new edition of me and my life I would like to make a few not superfluous suggestions for this new edition chiefly concerning the design of the frontispiece and the way the work is laid out."
February 1, 2025 at 9:59 AM
"If Heaven should find it useful and necessary to produce a new edition of me and my life I would like to make a few not superfluous suggestions for this new edition chiefly concerning the design of the frontispiece and the way the work is laid out."
"Like a great philosophical babbler he is concerned not so much with the truth as with the sound of his prose."
January 31, 2025 at 4:49 PM
"Like a great philosophical babbler he is concerned not so much with the truth as with the sound of his prose."
"Devised with a maximum of erudition and a minimum of common sense."
January 30, 2025 at 7:11 AM
"Devised with a maximum of erudition and a minimum of common sense."
"He is already in his forties and is still wearing red linings and bright colors. Thus he will never get into the lexicon of history, either as a genius or a rascal."
January 29, 2025 at 7:40 AM
"He is already in his forties and is still wearing red linings and bright colors. Thus he will never get into the lexicon of history, either as a genius or a rascal."
"To make known the weaknesses of the great is a kind of duty: in doing so one comforts thousands without doing the great any harm."
January 28, 2025 at 11:37 AM
"To make known the weaknesses of the great is a kind of duty: in doing so one comforts thousands without doing the great any harm."
"There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven."
January 27, 2025 at 7:00 AM
"There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven."
"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?"
January 26, 2025 at 10:26 AM
"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?"
"Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets a tremendous erection."
January 25, 2025 at 8:15 AM
"Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets a tremendous erection."
"Among the greatest discoveries human reason has made in recent times is, in my opinion, the art of reviewing books without having read them."
January 24, 2025 at 7:44 AM
"Among the greatest discoveries human reason has made in recent times is, in my opinion, the art of reviewing books without having read them."
"Every man also 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."
January 23, 2025 at 7:13 AM
"Every man also 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."
"Do you perhaps believe that your convictions owe their strength to arguments? Reasons are often and for the most part only expositions of pretensions designed to give a coloring of legitimacy and rationality to something we would have done in any case."
January 22, 2025 at 7:11 AM
"Do you perhaps believe that your convictions owe their strength to arguments? Reasons are often and for the most part only expositions of pretensions designed to give a coloring of legitimacy and rationality to something we would have done in any case."
"Rulers are not generally good men... How can we expect human affairs to proceed in a tolerable fashion? Of what use are introductions into the art of commercial management if the overlord is some buffoon who acknowledges no sovereignty but that of his own stupidity, caprice, whores and valets?"
January 21, 2025 at 7:25 AM
"Rulers are not generally good men... How can we expect human affairs to proceed in a tolerable fashion? Of what use are introductions into the art of commercial management if the overlord is some buffoon who acknowledges no sovereignty but that of his own stupidity, caprice, whores and valets?"
"They sell everything except their shirt and then go on selling."
January 20, 2025 at 7:20 AM
"They sell everything except their shirt and then go on selling."
"If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read."
January 19, 2025 at 8:30 AM
"If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read."
"What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others."
January 18, 2025 at 9:51 AM
"What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others."
"Our inability to learn in later years is connected with our unwillingness to take orders in later years, and is so very closely."
January 17, 2025 at 7:39 AM
"Our inability to learn in later years is connected with our unwillingness to take orders in later years, and is so very closely."
"It is a question whether in the arts and sciences a best is possible beyond which our understanding cannot go. Perhaps this point is infinitely distant, notwithstanding that with every closer approximation we have less in front of us."
January 16, 2025 at 7:54 AM
"It is a question whether in the arts and sciences a best is possible beyond which our understanding cannot go. Perhaps this point is infinitely distant, notwithstanding that with every closer approximation we have less in front of us."
"To excuse one's own failings as being only human nature is, provided one has meant well, every writer's first duty to himself."
January 15, 2025 at 11:00 AM
"To excuse one's own failings as being only human nature is, provided one has meant well, every writer's first duty to himself."
"The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use."
January 14, 2025 at 7:17 AM
"The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use."
"He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards."
January 13, 2025 at 7:15 AM
"He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards."