Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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Der allgemeine Ueberblick zeigt uns, als die beiden Feinde des menschlichen Glückes, den Schmerz und die Langeweile.
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All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
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Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones.
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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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It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
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With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
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What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.
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Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.
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As the strata of the earth preserve in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expositions, which like the former were very lively and made a great commotion in their own age but now stand petrified and stiff in a place where only the literary palaeontologist regards them.
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Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.
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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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The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.
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NOT to my contemporaries, not to my compatriots but to mankind I commit my now completed work in the confidence that it will not be without value for them, even if this should be late recognised, as is commonly the lot of what is good. For it cannot have been for the passing generation, engrossed with the delusion of the moment, that my mind, almost against my will, has uninterruptedly stuck to its work through the course of a long life. preface to the second edition of "the world as will and representation.
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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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Every truth passes through 3 stages before it is recognized 1)ridicule 2) opposition 3) accepted as self-evident.
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This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.
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It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limit of our reasonable desires in respect of possessions.
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The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.
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Consciousness makes the individual careful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, there would be no surety for the preservation of the species. From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of perfection, but rather a limitation; and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain.
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The Universe is a dream dreamed by a single dreamer where all the dream characters dream too.
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I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.
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The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.
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In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death.
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Zuvörderst nämlich wird eine Regierung nicht Leute besolden, um Dem, was sie durch tausend von ihr angestellte Priester, oder Religionslehrer, von allen Kanzeln verkünden läßt, direkt, oder auch nur indirekt, zu widersprechen. … Daher der Grundsatz improbant secus docentes.