Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
Most popular Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
Each day is a little life.
Books, that paper memory of mankind.
Compassion is the basis of all morality.
Money is human happiness in the abstract.
Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.
A chief fruit on the tree of wisdom is silence.
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do.
To marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Any book which is at all important should be reread immediately.
Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
The highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind.
We take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something.
The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.
There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Authors may be divided into three classes—shooting stars, planets, and fixed stars.
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.
Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.
The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
It can truly be said: Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become, and the same is true of fame.
A little self-control at the right moment may prevent much subsequent compulsion at the hands of others.
I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.
Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred.
To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence, no matter where the obstacles are encountered.
If the imagination is to yield any real product, it must have received a great deal of material from the external world.
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for a uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.
There is one respect in which brutes show real wisdom when compared with us—I mean their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.
In a wider sense, it can also be said that the first forty years of our life furnish the text, whereas the following thirty supply the commentary.
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.
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.
Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target . . . which others cannot even see.
To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thoughts into few words stamps the man of genius.
Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
As the strata of the earth preserve in their order the living creatures of past epochs, so do the shelves of libraries preserve in their order past errors and their expositions.
In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theater before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin.
It may be said that religion is the chef d'oeuvre of the art of training, because it trains people in the way that shall think: and, as is well known, you cannot begin the process too early.
Journalists are, in the very nature of their calling, alarmists; and this is their way of giving interest to what they write. Herein they are like little dogs; if anything stirs, they immediately set up a shrill bark.
Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in insignificant matters, and in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feeling of others, and denies nothing to itself.
Pride is an established conviction of one's own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself.
Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. A meteor makes a striking effect for a moment. You look up and cry "There!" and it is gone forever. Planets and wandering stars last a much longer time. They often outshine the fixed stars . . . only because they are near. It is not long before they must yield their place.
