Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.
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A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.
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Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.
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It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them.
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If anyone spends almost the whole day in reading...he gradually loses the capacity for thinking...This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid.
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I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the absurd and the senseless, standing in universal admiration and honour.
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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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Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.
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The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy is like the deciphering of it.
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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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Every new born being indeed comes fresh and blithe into the new existence, and enjoys it as a free gift: but there is, and can be, nothing freely given. It's fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of a worn out existence which has perished, but which contained the indestructible seed out of which the new existence has arisen: they are one being.
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Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
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Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.
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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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Where there is no love, a person's faithfulness to the marriage bond is probably against nature.
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In the blessings as well as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which it is met.
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There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?
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If the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly-nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.
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Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
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What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.
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One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.
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Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.
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Faith is like love, it cannot be forced. Therefore it is a dangerous operation if an attempt be made to introduce or bind it by state regulations; for, as the attempt to force love begets hatred, so also to compel religious belief produces rank unbelief.
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Our religions will never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.