Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) was a professor of experimental physics and a keeper of Sudelbücher, “waste books” filled with observations and opinions. Here are three non-consecutive entries:
I forget most of what I have read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account.One could do worse than be a reader of New York Review Books books.
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Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of infinite meaning.
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Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older . . .
From The Waste Books. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: New York Review Books, 2000). Originally published as Aphorisms (1990).
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From The Waste Books
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