Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
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Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within.
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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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Human existence is an error...it is bad today and every day it gets worse, until the worst happens.
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Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.
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There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.
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As a general rule, the longer a man's fame is likely to last, the later it will be in coming; for all excellent products require time for their development.
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No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it.
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Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.
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Every parting is a foretaste of death, and every reunion a foretaste of resurrection.
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The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.
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Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science. Experience makes us acquainted with the phenomenon in the particular and by means of examples, science embraces the whole of phenomena by means of general conceptions. So poetry seeks to make us acquainted with the Platonic Ideas through the particular and by means of examples. Philosophy aims at teaching, as a whole and in general, the inner nature of things which expresses itself in these. One sees even here that poetry bears more the character of youth, philosophy that of old age.
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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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Not to go to the theater is like making one's toilet without a mirror.
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Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.
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Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.
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Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.
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The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
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Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so.
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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.
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Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.
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Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.
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The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.
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It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.