Georg C. Lichtenberg

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me.

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.

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

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.