A Quote by Arthur Schopenhauer
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
Related Quotes
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.
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.
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature - if that word can be used in reference to man, who has ‘invented’ himself by saying ‘no’ to nature - consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.
All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communicate he must cut himself off from all communication; and in this there is something always a little mad.
When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.
For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God [Gen. 3:1-7], while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man [2 Cor. 5:21]. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.
Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.
In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it. Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty -he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world -alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.
Love alone allows man to forget himself... it alone can still redeem even the darkest hours of the past since it alone finds the courage to believe in the mercy of the holy God.
The manager-leader of the future should combine in one personality the robust, realistic quality of the man of action with the insight of the artist, the religious leader, the poet, who explains man to himself. The man of action alone or the man of contemplation alone will not be enough; these two qualities together are required.
Why can a man not act himself, be himself, and think for himself? It seems to me that naturalness alone is power; that a borrowed word is weaker than our own weakness, however small we may be.
In the ardor of his enthusiasm, a youth set forth in quest of a man of whom he might take counsel as to his future, but after long search and many disappointments, he came near relinquishing the pursuit as hopeless, when suddenly it occurred to him that one must first be a man to find a man, and profiting by this suggestion, he set himself to the work of becoming himself the man he had been seeking so long and fruitlessly.
Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconscious, impersonal, material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but is his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny.
It is only as a man puts off from himself all external support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail.
...What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.
If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.
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