Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.
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Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure.
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The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.
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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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Everybody's friend is nobody's.
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Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.
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Compassion is the basis of morality.
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You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.
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Wealth as well as sea water. The more we drink, the more thirsty. The so famous.
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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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How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?
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The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favourably received at first.
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It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.
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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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Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
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A book can never be anything more than the impression of its author’s thoughts. The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in which he develops his matter — that is to say, what he has thought about it.
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Every genius is a great child; he gazes out at the world as something strange, a spectacle, and therefore with purely objective interest.
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Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man's happiness as its aim and object. Starting from this, everyone then believes he has the most legitimate claim to happiness and enjoyment. If, as usually happens, these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he suffers an injustice, in fact that he misses the whole point of his existence.
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Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
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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.
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The brut first knows death when it dies, but man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives; and this makes his life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised this character of constant anaihilation in the whole of life.
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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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Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.
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That a god like Jehovah should have created this world of misery and woe, out of pure caprice, and because he enjoyed doing it, and should then have clapped his hands in praise of his own work, and declared everything to be very good-that will not do at all!