Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something…

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

Sourced, Aphorisms (1765-1799)

E 36

Other Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

The highest point a poor brain can reach from experience is the ability to find out the weaknesses of superior people. - View Quote Details on The highest point a poor brain can reach from experience…
One should never trust a person who, while assuring you of something, puts his hands on his heart. - View Quote Details on One should never trust a person who, while assuring you…
The late M. who had a Catholic maid, once told me entirely bona fide: This person is a Catholic, it is true, but she is an honest, good soul. Recently she committed a perjury on my behalf. - View Quote Details on The late M. who had a Catholic maid, once told…
We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms. - View Quote Details on We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it…
A great speech is easy to learn by heart and a great poem even easier. How hard it would be to memorize as many words linked together senselessly, or a speech in a foreign tongue! Sense and understanding thus come to the aid of memory. Sense is order and order is in the last resort conformity with our nature. When we speak rationally we are only speaking in accordance with the nature of our being. That is why we devise genera and species in the case of plants and animals. The hypotheses we make belong here too: we are obliged to have them because otherwise we would unable to retain things… The question is, however, whether everything is legible to us. Certainly experiment and reflection enable us to introduce a significance into what is not legible, either to us or at all: thus we see faces or landscapes in the sand, though they are certainly not there. The introducion of symmetries belongs here too, silhouettes in inkblots, etc. Likewise the gradation we establish in the order of creatures: all this is not in the things but in us. In general we cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing. - View Quote Details on A great speech is easy to learn by heart and…
The fly that doesn’t want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter. - View Quote Details on The fly that doesn’t want to be swatted is most…
People don’t think so differently about the events of life as they talk about them. - View Quote Details on People don’t think so differently about the events of life…
Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven. - View Quote Details on Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any…
A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense. - View Quote Details on A clever child brought up with a foolish one can…
Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will. - View Quote Details on Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other…