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It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every remeeting a foretaste of the resurrection. That is why even people who are indifferent to each other rejoice so much if they meet again after twenty or thirty years of separation.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Personal courage is really a very subordinate virtue-a virtue, indeed, in which we are surpassed by the lower animals; or else you would not hear people say, as brave as a lion.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Man shows his character best in trifles.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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One man is more concerned with the impression he makes on the rest of mankind, another with the impression the rest of mankind makes on him.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
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.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the conscience.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
And yet, just as our body would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were removed from it, so would the arrogance of men expand, if not to the point of bursting then to that of the most unbridled folly, indeed madness, if the pressure of want, toil, calamity and frustration were removed from their life. One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.
Arthur Schopenhauer