Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another.
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...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is-nothing.
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The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.
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The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.
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Restlessness is the hallmark of existence.
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Human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself.
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It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
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There is a wide difference between the original thinker and the merely learned man.
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I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.
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A man’s body and the needs of his body are now everywhere treated with a tender indulgence. Is the thinking mind then, to be the only thing that is never to obtain the slightest measure of consideration or protection, to say nothing of respect?
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To become reconciled to a friend with whom you have broken, is a form of weakness; and you pay the penalty of it when he takes the first opportunity of doing precisely the very thing which brought about the breach.
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When a man has reached a condition in which he believes that a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and that what he wishes to happen never will be, this is really the state called desperation.
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Ball, Theater, Gesellschaft, Kartenspiel, Hasardspiel, Pferde, Weiber, Trinken, Reisen, … reicht dies Alles gegen die Langeweile nicht aus, wo Mangel an geistigen Bedürfnissen die geistigen Genüsse unmöglich macht. Daher auch ist dem Philister ein dumpfer, trockener Ernst, der sich dem thierischen nähert, eigen und charakteristisch.
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Das Bedenkliche bei der Sache ist auch bloß die doch einzuräumende Möglichkeit, daß die letzte dem Menschen erreichbare Einsicht in die Natur der Dinge, in sein eigenes Wesen und das der Welt nicht gerade zusammenträfe mit den Lehren, welche theils dem ehemaligen Völkchen der Juden eröffnet worden, theils vor 1800 Jahren in Jerusalem aufgetreten sind.
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I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.
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We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.
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Intellect is a magnitude of intensity, not a magnitude of extensity.
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Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination.
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Rascals are always sociable - more’s the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others’ company.
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Philosophy … is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
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Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.
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Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received.
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It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.
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Rudeness is better than any argument; it totally eclipses intellect.