Germany's wittiest writer, he is practically unknown to the English-speaking public.

He was a huge celebrity in late 18th-century Germany.

Goethe described his writings as "the most amazing divining rod; wherever he makes a joke, a problem is hidden." [Freud, 150 years later, would write, "Behind every funny story is a grievance."]

Leo Tolstoy said, "I am delighted by the clarity and gracefulness of Lichtenberg's style and his striking wit."

Nietzsche wrote of Lichtenberg's Aphorisms, "It is one of only three German books in prose, apart from those by Goethe, which deserves to be read over and over again."

Soren Kierkegaard exclaimed, "Oh, thanks for this voice in the wilderness, thanks for this cordial!"

Writers and thinkers as diverse as Heinrich Heine, André Breton, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Albert Einstein admired and acknowledged Lichtenberg as a significant inspiration for their own thinking.

Let us go, then, to a selection of entries and aphorisms from The Waste Books, Lichtenberg's name for his journal/diary of sorts.

When he was expected to use his mind, he felt like a right-handed person who has to do something with his left.

A landscape can be easily composed of a number of haphazard strokes, but not a piece of music of haphazard sounds.

I have observed that persons whose faces are somewhat asymmetrical often possess the subtlest minds.

Perhaps a thought is the cause of all motion in the world, and the philosophers who have taught that the world is an animal may have hit upon the notion in this way: they may have failed only to express themselves as exactly as they ought perhaps to have done. Our whole world is only the effect upon matter of one of God's thoughts.

He moved as slowly as an hour-hand amidst a crowd of second-hands.

If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like "2 x 2 = 13."

Doubt must be nothing more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.

I am convinced that a person doesn't only love himself in others; he also hates himself in others.

There is a sort of transcendental ventriloquy through which men can be made to believe that something which was said on earth came from heaven.

To make astute people believe that one is what one is not, is harder in most cases than actually to become what one wants to appear.

To discover trivial mistakes has always been characteristic of intellects little if at all above the mediocre. Those who are noticeably superior keep silent or make only criticisms which pertain to the whole. Great minds simply create, without fault-finding.