Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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If people insist that honor is dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we are to make any progress in the world.
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Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received.
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There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
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If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.
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Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
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If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.
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Apart from man, no being wonders at its own experience.
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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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Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination.
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The method of viewing things which proceeds in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason is the rational method, and it alone is valid and of use in practical life and in science. The method which looks away from the content of this principle is the method of genius, which is only valid and of use in art.
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My body and my will are one.
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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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Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
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Die Wahrheit kann warten: denn sie hat ein langes Leben vor sich.
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There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?
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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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All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.
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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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We see in tragedy the noblest men, after a long conflict and suffering, finally renounce forever all the pleasure of life and the aims till then pursued so keenly, or cheerfully and willingly give up life itself.
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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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Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.
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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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One can forget everything, everything, only not oneself, one's own being.
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Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.