Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them.
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The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
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There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake.
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Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.
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Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure.
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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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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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You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.
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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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Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.
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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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Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
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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 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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Everything that happens, happens of necessity.
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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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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 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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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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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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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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To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.
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The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father the former has intellect; the latter genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.
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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.