# Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's best aphorisms

The wittiest and wisest lines from Lichtenberg's «Waste Books» (1765–1799), each with notebook and number.

- 0 votes · 12 items
- Apr 22, 2024 · Kathrin Schuster
- https://even.best/en/l/1792/georg-christoph-lichtenberg-s-best-aphorisms

## Top 12

1. **I cannot say whether things will get better if they change; but I can say they must change if they are to get better.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook K (293).
2. **It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook G (13).
3. **A book is a mirror: if an ape looks in, no apostle can look out.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook E (215).
4. **The American who first discovered Columbus made a nasty discovery.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook G (183).
5. **That man is the noblest creature may be inferred from the fact that no other creature has contradicted him.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook D (331).
6. **The book that most deserves to be banned would be a catalogue of banned books.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook G (150).
7. **The fact that sermons are preached in churches doesn't make lightning rods on them unnecessary.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook L (67). Lichtenberg was a physicist and a champion of lightning rods.
8. **People who never have time do the least.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook K (125).
9. **The man had so much intelligence that he was almost useless for anything in the world.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook D (451).
10. **A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook E (196).
11. **He always read «Agamemnon» instead of «angenommen» (supposed), so much had he read Homer.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook G (187).
12. **A marriage without the spice of small quarrels would be almost like a poem without an R.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Waste Books, notebook L (473).

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