Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
-
Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.
-
Time is that in which all things pass away.
-
The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.
-
The charlatan takes very different shapes according to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.
-
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)
-
What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.
-
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?
-
The highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind.
-
Women remain children all their lives, for they always see only what is near at hand, cling to the present, take the appearance of a thing for reality, and prefer trifling matters to the most important.
-
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.
-
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
-
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
-
The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind.
-
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.
-
A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.
-
That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by a machine.
-
Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
-
What a person is for himself, what abides with him in his loneliness and isolation, and what no one can give or take away from him, this is obviously more essential for him than everything that he possesses or what he may be in the eyes of others.
-
Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety valve is to the steam engine.
-
A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.
-
It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of Time and Space.
-
Philosophy of religion … really amounts to … philosophizing on certain favorite assumptions that are not confirmed at all.
-
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
-
A happy life is impossible; the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.