Arthur Schopenhauer Quotations

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

People of Wealth and the so called upper class suffer the most from boredom.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

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

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

Rascals are always sociable, more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

The word of man is the most durable of all material.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

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

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

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

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

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

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity. All young people should be taught now to put up with loneliness ... because the less man is compelled to come into contact with others, the better off he is.

Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate.

To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.

Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.

For an act to be moral the intention must be based on compassion, not duty. We do something because we want to do it, because we feel we have to do it, not because we ought to do it. And even if our efforts fail - or we never even get to implement them - we are still moral because our motivation was based on compassion.

Boredom is an evil that is not to be estimated lightly. It can come in the end to real despair. The public authority takes precautions against it everywhere, as against other universal calamities.

Animals learn death first at the moment of death;...man approaches death with the knowledge it is closer every hour, and this creates a feeling of uncertainty over his life, even for him who forgets in the business of life that annihilation is awaiting him. It is for this reason chiefly that we have philosophy and religion.

How entirely does the Upanishad breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is every one who by a diligent study of its Persian Latin has become familiar with that incomparable book stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his Soul !

A hedge between keeps friendship green.

In reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts.

Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man IS contributes more to his happiness than what he HAS.

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions.

Our life is a loan received from death with sleep as the daily interest on this loan.

I love looking at famous people. Because of the way they look. Because of the way photography makes them look famous.

Human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself.