Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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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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Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is.
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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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The greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life; because that is the only reality, all else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand, such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly: for that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth a serious effort.
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There is only one inborn error. and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy.
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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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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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Everything that happens, happens of necessity.
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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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It is not what things are objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the reverse.
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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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To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.
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Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius.
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To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.
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To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
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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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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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To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.
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It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulse that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race.
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Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
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To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.
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The fourfold root of the principle of sufficent reason is "Anything perceived has a cause. All conclusions have premises. All effects have causes. All actions have motives.
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The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
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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.