Arthur Schopenhauer Art Quotations

Music is the answer to the mystery of life. The most profound of all the arts, It expresses the deepest thoughts of life.

We should comfort ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages-stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us.

In their hearts women think that it is men's business to earn money and theirs to spend it.

The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper below him.

JedeTrennung gibt einenVorgeschmack desTodesund jedes Wiedersehen einenVorgeschmack der Auferstehung. Every parting is a foretaste of death, and every reunion a foretaste of resurrection.

...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.

The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favourably received at first.

Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the conscience.

If God made this world, then i would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart.

Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters, and musicians.

Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to dramatic art, for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible.

You must treat a work of art like a great man: stand before it and wait patiently till it deigns to speak.

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself--in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.

As my own father was sick, and miserably tied to his invalid's chair, he would have been abandoned had not an old servant performed for him a so-called service of love. My mother gave parties while he was perishing in solitude, and amused herself while he was suffering bitter agonies

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.

Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

On the path of actions, great heart is the chief recommendation; on that works, a great head.

The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.

The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father the former has intellect; the latter genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be true.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.

All religions promise a reward beyond this life in eternity for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head, of the understanding.

The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality." - Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher

If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection