Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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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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The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
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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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Not to go to the theater is like making one's toilet without a mirror.
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The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.
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Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls.
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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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Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.
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Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within.
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The scenes and events of long ago, and the persons who took part in them, wear a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and so it always seems defective.
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The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper below him.
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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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Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.
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Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to turn into.
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The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
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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.
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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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Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex.
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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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Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.
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Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood.
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We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
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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.
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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.