Quotes by
Arthur Schopenhauer |
1788-1860 , German philosopher
German philosopher, often called the “philosopher of pessimism,” who was primarily important as the exponent of a metaphysical doctrine of the will in immediate reaction against Hegelian idealism. His writings influenced later existential philosophy and Freudian psychology.His most important work: “ The World as Will and Representation ” (1818).
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Quotations
| • | All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. 19 |
| • | Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle. 14 |
| • | After your death, you will be what you were before your birth. 13 |
| • | For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it. 13 |
| • | The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him. 13 |
| • | A man can be himself only so long as he is alone. 12 |
| • | We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people. 12 |
| • | Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. 10 |
| • | A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man. 9 |
| • | Buying books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them. 8 |
| • | If God made this world, then i would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart. 8 |
| • | No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose. 8 |
| • | A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial. 7 |
| • | Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis. 7 |
| • | I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow. 7 |
| • | Life is a constant process of dying. 7 |
| • | Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own. 7 |
| • | The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy. 7 |
| • | Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things. 6 |
| • | The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity. 6 |
| • | The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it. 6 |
| • | The truth can wait, for she lives a long life. 6 |
| • | There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome. 6 |
| • | Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity. 6 |
| • | For everyday life, genius is as useful as a giant telescope in the theater. 6 |
| • | All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding. 5 |
| • | For our improvement we need a mirror. 5 |
| • | Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude. 5 |
| • | Intellect is invisible to the man who has none. 5 |
| • | It is with trifles and when he is off guard that a man best reveals his character. 5 |
| • | Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills. 5 |
| • | Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes. 5 |
| • | Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies. 5 |
| • | Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within. 5 |
| • | People of Wealth and the so called upper class suffer the most from boredom. 5 |
| • | The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom. 5 |
| • | Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first. 5 |
| • | Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots! 4 |
| • | Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal. 4 |
| • | Compassion is the basis of morality. 4 |
| • | 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. 4 |
| • | Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child. 4 |
| • | Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. 4 |
| • | Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost. 4 |
| • | Hatred is a thing of the heart, contempt a thing of the head. And neither feeling is quite within our control. 4 |
| • | Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability. 4 |
| • | In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties. 4 |
| • | The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite. 4 |
| • | There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy? 4 |
| • | We seldom think of what we have, but always of what we lack. 4 |
| • | Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become. 4 |
| • | Every nation criticizes every other one — and they are all correct. 3 |
| • | Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection. 3 |
| • | If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man’s property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. 3 |
| • | If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it. 3 |
| • | It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else. 3 |
| • | Life is a business that does not cover the costs. 3 |
| • | Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls. 3 |
| • | Music is the occult metaphysical exercise of a soul not knowing that it philosophizes. 3 |
| • | Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect. 3 |
| • | Ordinary people merely think how they shall “spend” their time; a man of talent tries to “use” it. 3 |
| • | Rascals are always sociable — more’s the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others’ company. 3 |
| • | So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees. 3 |
| • | The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value. 3 |
| • | The world is my idea. 3 |
| • | For where did Dante get the material for his Hell, if not from this actual world of ours? 2 |
| • | I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people. 2 |
| • | Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally. 2 |
| • | Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete, devotes his heart entirely to money. 2 |
| • | Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex. 2 |
| • | Philosophy of religion really amounts to philosophizing on certain favorite assumptions that are not confirmed at all. 2 |
| • | Philosophy is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions. 2 |
| • | Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think. 2 |
| • | The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate. 2 |
| • | The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it. 2 |
| • | The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body. 2 |
| • | The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting. 2 |
