Top 575 Quotes & Sayings by Arthur Schopenhauer - Page 2

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

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.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

The word of man is the most durable of all material.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

The Universe is a dream dreamed by a single dreamer where all the dream characters dream too.

Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so.

Consider the Koran... this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.

The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.

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.

We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack. Therefore, rather than grateful, we are bitter.

Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.

If anyone spends almost the whole day in reading...he gradually loses the capacity for thinking...This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.

If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked.

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.

Our life is a loan received from death with sleep as the daily interest on this loan.

If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.

What people commonly call fate is mostly their own stupidity.

To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.

The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.

The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate.

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

There is something in us that is wiser than our head.

To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.