Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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Physics is unable to stand on its own feet, but needs a metaphysics on which to support itself, whatever fine airs it may assume towards the latter.
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The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.
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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.
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Die Gegenwart eines Gedankens ist wie die Gegenwart einer Geliebten.
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Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself. . . . Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.
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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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The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes: in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists; in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being; in continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists. . . Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value.
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There is a wide difference between the original thinker and the merely learned man.
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First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.
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A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
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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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Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to turn into.
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Zu unserer Besserung bedürfen wir eines Spiegels.
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The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance off.
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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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The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind.
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The appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres.
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Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
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Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.
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To attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and…though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely in expectation of which they lived.
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In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.
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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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No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.
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Each day is a little life.