Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it.
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It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of Time and Space.
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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.
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In general admittedly the Wise of all times have always said the same thing, and the fools, that is to say the vast majority of all times, have always done the same thing, i.e. the opposite; and so it will remain in the future.
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Die Gegenwart eines Gedankens ist wie die Gegenwart einer Geliebten.
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Alles, alles kann einer vergessen, nur nicht sich selbst, sein eigenes Wesen.
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The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it.
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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. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.
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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.
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Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars.
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Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.
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Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.
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Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism.
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A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
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There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. ... The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.
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There is no vice of which a man can be guilty, no meanness, no shabbiness, no unkindness, which excites so much indignation among his contemporaries, friends and neighbours, as his success. This is the one unpardonable crime, which reason cannot defend, nor humility mitigate.
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What a man can do and suffer is unknown to himself till some occasion presents itself which draws out the hidden power. Just as one sees not in the water of an unruffled pond the fury and roar with which it can dash down a steep rock without injury to itself, or how high it is capable of rising; or as little as one can suspect the latent heat in ice-cold water.
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Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.
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A happy life is impossible; the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.
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If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.
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In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
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If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the miseries of boredom.
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The greatest intellectual capacities are only found in connection with a vehement and passionate will.
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In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.