A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand.

This remark is characteristic of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s posthumously published notebooks (the “Sudelbücher,” or waste books), where he recorded aphorisms, critical observations, and fragments rather than finished treatises. Writing in the late Enlightenment, Lichtenberg was acutely aware of how authors are read across time: posterity often values suggestiveness, intellectual density, and the capacity to generate further inquiry. The sentence reflects a notebook-writer’s sensibility—ideas appear in passing, tucked into “some corner of a chapter,” as if the author has an inexhaustible surplus of thought. It also hints at Lichtenberg’s skepticism toward over-systematized philosophy and his preference for fertile, provocative fragments.

Lichtenberg is arguing for intellectual density and suggestiveness as a mark of writing that lasts. To be “read by posterity” a writer should not merely be clear or complete, but should scatter fertile, half-developed insights—“hints” capable of generating “whole books” or scholarly debates. The paradoxical image of tossing such ideas away “by the thousand” implies abundance: the author’s mind overflows with observations, and the work’s surface contains more than any single reading can exhaust. The quote also reflects Lichtenberg’s own practice as an aphorist and notebook-writer, valuing fragments and sparks that provoke further thought over closed, system-building exposition.