Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany , then everything done by man, and even by animal, is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else; hence there is no ethics.
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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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Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.
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Man shows his character best in trifles.
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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.
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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 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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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.
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To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
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It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.
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I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.
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If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.
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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.
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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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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.
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Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.
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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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All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.
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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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The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains why women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men;... and why, on the contrary, they are inferior to men as regards justice, and less honourable and conscientious.
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When a new truth enters the world, the first stage of reaction to it is ridicule, the second stage is violent opposition, and in the third stage, that truth comes to be regarded as self-evident.
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No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress.
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Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
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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.