Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends fifteen minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I've now got more important things to do. Goodbye!
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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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We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.
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Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
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Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.
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At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.
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Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
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The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it.
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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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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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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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I observed once to Goethe that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself.
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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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If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.
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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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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.
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Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.
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Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.
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Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
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Je weniger einer, in Folge objektiver oder subjektiver Bedingungen, nötig hat, mit den Menschen in Berührung zu kommen, desto besser ist er daran.
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Jede Trennung gibt einen Vorgeschmack des Todes und jedes Wiedersehen einen Vorgeschmack der Auferstehung.
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In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works. - vol. II, p. 582 (as cited on p. 177 of Schopenhauer: A Biography)
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We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.