Still more wisdom from German aphorist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799):

• “That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.”
• “If people should ever start to do only what is necessary, millions would die of hunger.”
• “I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others, but hate ourselves in others too.”
• “Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.”
• “Nothing is judged more carelessly than people’s characters, and yet there is nothing about which we should be more cautious. Nowhere do we wait less patiently for the sum total which actually is the character. I have always found that the so-called bad people gain when we get to know them more closely, and the good ones lose.”
• “Completely to block a given effect requires a force equal to that which caused it. To give it a different direction, a trifle will often suffice.”
• “Undeniably, what we call perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.”
• “The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.”
• “There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.”
• “He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.”
• “It is certain, it seems, that we can judge some matter correctly and wisely and yet, as soon as we are required to specify our reasons, can specify only those which any beginner in that sort of fencing can refute. Often the wisest and best men know as little how to do this as they know the muscles with which they grip or play the piano. This is very true and deserves to be pursued further.”

See Diamonds and Pearls, From the Notebooks, and The Sage of Göttingen.