Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/34

 taste for what is odd and singular. The wise man never becomes overwise, but the overwise may ultimately become wise if he leaves off making a business of invention, and reads a great many sensible books, provided he has not taken too high a flight. People who are apt to boast of their frankness ought to consider that this is a quality that must proceed from the character, or otherwise it must appear rudeness to the man who esteems it where it is genuine.

When we are seriously apprehensive of any event, the most remote things bring the subject to mind. In the case of those who are at Court, the slightest alteration in the look, not of the prince himself, but merely of his servant, may lead a person to believe that he has fallen into disgrace. But character makes a great deal of difference in this respect, and so delineators must be very careful.

He was in other respects a being like you or me, only that he had to be pinched harder for him to call out; he had to look twice to notice anything, to hear twice to remember anything, and what others stopped doing after one box on the ears he would stop doing only after a second.

No people are more conceited than those who depict their own feelings, especially if they happen to have a little prose at their command for the occasion.