Picture of author.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799)

Author of The Waste Books

140+ Works 1,162 Members 15 Reviews 9 Favorited

About the Author

Image credit: Portrait by Johann Ludwig Strecker (1744), print by J.C. Krueger

Series

Works by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The Waste Books (1984) 436 copies
Aphorisms (1967) 187 copies
James Cook, der Entdecker (1980) — Author — 18 copies
Werke in einem Band (1978) — Author — 16 copies
Aphorismen, Essays, Briefe (1970) 10 copies
Aus den Sudelbüchern (2008) 10 copies
Pensees (1999) 9 copies
Le miroir de l'âme (2012) 7 copies
Sudelbücher (2005) 7 copies
Gedankenbücher 6 copies
Die Aphorismen-Bher (2005) 5 copies
Lichtenberg (1998) 5 copies
Algunos aforismos (1999) 4 copies
Gedachten (1958) 4 copies
Quaderns de notes (2012) 3 copies
Breviario de aforismos (2000) 3 copies
Osservazioni e massime (2009) 2 copies
Homo sapiens : Aphorismen (1961) 2 copies
In meinem Kopf des Nachts (1997) 2 copies
Reflections 1 copy
Aforizmalar 1 copy
Cuadernos I (2015) 1 copy

Associated Works

George Christoph Lichtenberg. (1671) — Associated Name — 6 copies

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Members

Reviews

More than 1,000 aphorisms from the notebooks of George Lichtenberg, a German mathematician and physicist. His writings have been influential with authors like Goethe and Nietzsche and continue to inform thinkers to this day.
 
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jwhenderson | 2 other reviews | Jun 13, 2022 |
I finished _The Waste Books_ by Lichtenberg. I really like this book. It’s a collection of paragraphs about the world, impressions of someone who sees themselves as part of the Enlightenment, but who feels society bears down on him and others in a way that’s repressive and against the better angels of our nature. His witty questions and answers are like a sieve for approaching the most important questions we face as humans. He prefigures a lot of more modern thought, where we can see traces of things to come, like embodied cognition and pragmatism. But it’s not only philosophical; there are jokes, insults, exasperated sighs, small cries of pain. And for anyone interested in writing, the book is a goldmine of the vicissitudes of that profession: too many books exist, written by people for whom the book is more of a means of personal extension, part of the business of being someone in society, rather than the accumulated evidence of work towards an end honestly and genuinely approached. Most of what he says about his present of the eighteenth century still applies to our present. It’s also a book that can be read in tiny little chunks, like a bathroom reader. I read a little bit of it every morning after waking up. It was like reading a witty letter from a friend trying to bolster me for the day.… (more)
 
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jtth | 9 other reviews | Aug 17, 2021 |
A gem. From now on Lichtenberg will rest side by side with my Plutarch Moralia, Gracian Oracle, Montaigne Essays and Scopenhauer Parerga and Paralipomena.
 
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Westwest | 9 other reviews | Oct 31, 2019 |

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Statistics

Works
140
Also by
1
Members
1,162
Popularity
#22,117
Rating
4.2
Reviews
15
ISBNs
130
Languages
13
Favorited
9

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