Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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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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Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.
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A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt.
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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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Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones.
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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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Before you take anything away, you must have something better to put in its place.
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Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say defunctus est; it means that the man has done his task.
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A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
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Der Philister … ist demnach ein Mensch ohne geistige Bedürfnisse. Hieraus nun folgt gar mancherlei: erstlich, in Hinsicht auf ihn selbst, daß er ohne geistige Genüsse bleibt; nach dem schon erwähnten Grundsatz: il n’est pas de vrais plaisirs qu’avec de vrais besoins.
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The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that moral character is unalterable: a single bad action implies that future actions of the same kind will, under similar circumstances, also be bad.
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Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.
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The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world 'God' is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word 'world'.
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The moralists of Europe have pretended that beasts have no rights... a doctrine revolting/gross/barbarous... on which a native of the Asiatic uplands could not look without righteous horror.
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Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
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Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher.
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We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
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The world is not a factory and animals are not products for our use.
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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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The beard, being a half-mask, should be forbidden by the police - It is, moreover, as a sexual symbol in the middle of the face, obscene: that is why it pleases women.
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Time is that in which all things pass away.
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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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...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.
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He who can see truly in the midst of general infatuation is like a man whose watch keeps good time, when all clocks in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows the right time; what use is that to him?