#ow

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. ↗

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

#become #bestow #content #earnest #fleeting

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs. ↗

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

#create #created #god #his #image

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own. ↗

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

#ages #dark #dark ages #including #our

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism. ↗

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

#attain #barbarism #greeks #hardly #human

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others. ↗

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

#back #called #human #human nature #knowledge

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it. ↗

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

#actual #any #aristocracy #cannot #decree

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 C. Lichtenberg

#covered #decorum #every #every man #his

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

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

#does #earnest #every #flattery #hates

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists. ↗

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

#consists #craft #employing #genius #gift

Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones. ↗

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

#before #etc #just #libraries #new