Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to turn into.
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There are three stages in the revelation of truth. The first is to be ridiculed, the second is to be resisted and the third is to be considered self-evident.
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Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.
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A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.
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The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen.
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Means at our disposal should be regarded as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that can occur. We should not regard such wealth as a permission or even an obligation to procure for ourselves the pleasures of the world.
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The ordinary method of education is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.
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...in the end every one stands alone, and the important thing is who it is that stands alone.
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Hence, in all countries the chief occupation of society is card-playing, and it is the gauge of its value, and an outward sign that it is bankrupt in thought. Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!
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The life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.
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All wanting comes from need, therefore from lack, therefore from suffering.
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Because Christian morality leaves animals out of account, they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere 'things,' mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights, and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!
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There is something in us that is wiser than our head.
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All satisfaction, or what iscommonlycalled happiness, is really and essentially always negative only, and never positive.
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He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.
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Alles, alles kann einer vergessen, nur nicht sich selbst, sein eigenes Wesen.
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Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.
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In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
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A word too much always defeats its purpose.
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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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We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
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For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shine only when it is dark.
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Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
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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.