The Art of Having Something to Say Part 10: Lichtenberg

"When sometimes I had drunk a lot of coffee. . ." and Other Aphorisms 

1.5 Rousseau was right to call accent the soul of speech, and we often regard people as stupid and when we look into it we find it is merely the simple sound of their manner of speaking.

1.7 If we want to draw up a philosophy that will be useful to us in life, or if we want to offer universal rules for a perpetually contented life, then, to be sure, we have to abstract from that which introduces a much too great diversity into our contemplations - somewhat as we often do in mathematics when we forget friction and other similar particular properties of bodies so that the calculation will not be too difficult for us, or at least replace such properties with a single letter. Small misfortunes incontestably introduce a large measure of uncertainty into these practical rules, so that we have to dismiss them from our mind and turn our attention only to overcoming the greater misfortunes. This is incontestably the true meaning of certain propositions of the Stoic philosophy.

1.16 When sometimes I had drunk a lot of coffee, and was consequently startled by anything, I noticed quite distinctly that I was startled before I heard the noise: we thus hear as it were with other organs as well as with our ears.

1.20 A sensation expressed in words is like music described in words: the expressions we use are not sufficiently at one with the thing to be expressed. The poet who wants to excite sympathy directs the reader to a painting, and through this to the thing to be expressed. A painted landscape gives instant delight, but one celebrated in verse has first to be painted in the reader's own head. . .

1.25 The animalcula infusoria are bladders with desires.

1.26 It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure, the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.

1.29 The contention over signification and being which has caused such mischief in religion would perhaps have been more salutary if it had been conducted in respect to other subjects, for it is a general source of misfortune to us that we believe things are in actuality what they in fact only signify.

1.32 When Plato says the passions and natural desires are the wings of the soul he expresses himself in a very instructive way: such comparisons illuminate the subject and are as it were the translation of difficult concepts into a language familiar to everyone - true definitions.

1.35 The peasant who believes the moon is no bigger than a plough wheel never reflects that at a distance of a few miles a whole church appears only as a white speck but the moon on the contrary seems always to be the same size: what prevents him from connecting these ideas, which are all presented to hm distinctly? In his ordinary life he does in fact connect ideas and perhaps does so by more artificial connections than these. This reflection should make the philosopher pay heed: perhaps in some of the connections he makes he is still a peasant. We think early in life but we do not know we are thinking, any more than we know we are growing or digesting; many ordinary people never do discover it. Close observation of external things easily leads back to the point of observation, ourselves, and conversely he who is for once wholly aware of himself easily proceeds from that to obseving things around him. Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.

1.37 The philosophy of mankind as such is the philosophy of one certain individual man corrected by the philosophy of others, even of fools, and this in accordance with the rules of a rational assessment of degrees of probability. Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.

1.38 To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject. Cautiousness in judgements is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.

2.10 Everyone ought to study at least as much philosophy and belles lettres as will serve to heighten his sensual pleasures, If our country squires, courtiers, counts and others took note of this they would often be astounded at the effect a book can produce. . .

2.14 Character of someone I know. His body is such that even a bad draughtsman could draw it better in the dark, and if it lay in his power to alter it many parts of it would be less obtrusive. Although his health is not of the best, this man has always been more or less content with it, and he possesses to a high degree the gift of making good use of healthy days. On such days his imagination, the most loyal of his companions, never deserts him; he stands at the window with his head between his hands, and if the passer-by sees nothing but a moper with his head in his hands he himself often silently confesses he has again been indulging in an excess of pleasure. He has but few friends, in fact his heart is open only to one who is actually present, though for several who are absent; his courtesy and complaisance make many believe he is their friend, and he does indeed serve them, but it is out of ambition or philanthropy, and not from the instinct that drives him to be a servant of his real friends. He has loved only once or twice, the first time not unhappily but the second time very happily; he gained through cheerfulness and levity alone a good heart through which he now often forgets both, though he will always revere cheerfulness and levity as qualities of his own soul which have procured for him the pleasantest hours of his life; and if he could choose another life and another soul I do not know that he would choose different ones if he could have his own back again. Even as a boy he was very free and independent of mind as regards religion, but never thought it would do him honour to be a free-spirit, nor however that to believe everything without exception would do him honour either. He is capable of fevent prayer and has never been able to read the 90th Psalm without an indescribable feeling of exaltation. Before the mountains were brought forth etc. means infinitely more to him than Sing, immortal soul etc. He does not know whom he hates more, young officers or young clergymen, but he could not live long with either of them. For assemblies his figure and his dress have seldom been good enough or his sentiments sufficiently - . He hopes never to have more than three courses for lunch and two for dinner, with a little wine, or less than potatoes, apples, bread and also a little wine every day: more than the one and less than the other would both make him unwell, as they always have done when for a few days he has lived beyond their boundaries. Reading and writing are as necessary to him as eating and drinking, and he hopes he will never be without books. He thinks about death very often and never with aversion; he wishes he could think about everything with so much composure, and hopes his Creator will one day demand of him gently a life of which he was, though not a particularly economical, a by no means profligate possessor.

2.17 He was so witty that any thing served him as an intermediate term for comparing any pair of other things with one another.

2.18 It is silly to assert that we are sometimes not really in the mood for anything; I believe that the moment in which we feel strong enough to suppress one of our principal drives, namely the drive to work and act, is the moment when we are perhaps best fitted to undertake the strangest and greatest things. The state we are in is a kind of langour in which the soul percieves as much that is uncommonly small as when in a state of ardent enthusiasm it does that which is uncommonly big; and as this latter state can be compared with the bold undertakings of the astronomers, so the former can be compared with the exertions of a Leeuwenhoek [ ].

2.21 Human pride is a strange thing, it is not easy to suppress: when hole A has been stoped up, before you know it it is peering out of hole B, and if that is closed it is already behind hole C, etc.

2.25 Sometimes I do not go out of the house for a week and live very contentedly: an equal period of house-arrest would make me ill. Where freedom is possible we move easily in our circle; where thought is under constraint even permitted thoughts come forth nervously.

2.27 Drinking, provided it is not indulged in before the age of 35, is not so greatly to be censured as many of my readers will imagine. This is approximately the time when a man emerges from the aberrant paths of his life out on to the plateau upon which he sees his future course lying open before him. It is depressing if, now discovering it is not the right course, his should be too weak on his feet at this stage to seek another. Should this discovery be attended by a sense of disquietude, experience has taught that wine sometimes works miracles; that five or six glasses put a man in the situation he has otherwise failed to attain . . .

2.30 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.