Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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Animals learn death first at the moment of death;...man approaches death with the knowledge it is closer every hour, and this creates a feeling of uncertainty over his life, even for him who forgets in the business of life that annihilation is awaiting him. It is for this reason chiefly that we have philosophy and religion.
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To read a book is to hold an entire world in the palm of your hand. That world is unique to you; no two readers can ever inhabit the same world.
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Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man IS contributes more to his happiness than what he HAS.
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We should comfort ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages-stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us.
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Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious... and consequently the concentration of all desire.
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That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous. Photography offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.
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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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What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.
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There is one respect in which beasts show real wisdom... their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.
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Truth is most beautiful undraped.
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A man who has not enough originality to think out a new title for his book will be much less capable of giving it new contents.
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A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.
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Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.
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Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible.
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Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.
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History is the long, difficult and confused dream of Mankind.
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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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Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?
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The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.
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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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It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.
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Compassion is the basis of morality.
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Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.
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Style is the physiognomy of the mind. It is more infallible than that of the body. To imitate the style of another is said to be wearing a mask. However beautiful it may be, it is through its lifelessness insipid and intolerable, so that even the most ugly living face is more engaging.