Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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Wealth as well as sea water. The more we drink, the more thirsty. The so famous.
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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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You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.
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Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is.
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Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.
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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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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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I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of 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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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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I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant's works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.
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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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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!
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To conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, new and unheard-of expressions, all of which together furnish an extremely difficult jargon that sounds very learned. Yet with all this they say-precisely nothing.
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To form a judgment intuitively is the privilege of few; authority and example lead the rest of the world. They see with the eyes of others, they hear with the ears of others. Therefore it is very easy to think as all the world now think; but to think as all the world will think thirty years hence is not in the power of every one.
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Imagination is strong in a man when that particular function of the brain which enables him to observe is roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the sense. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our sense are not excited by external objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or in a sick room; quiet, twilight, darkness-these are the things that promote its activity; and under their influence it comes into play of itself.
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To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
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Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light.
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Everything that happens, happens of necessity.
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Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.
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Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius.
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The auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start saying farewell to all uprightness, honesty and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists - Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, first a false pathos, then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair of ever being able to convince.
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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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To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.