Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral co...

Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the la...

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant f...

Boredom is certainly not an evil to be taken lightly: it will ultimately etch lines of true despair ...

What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first ink...

there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to ta...

Every fulfilled wish we wrest from the world is really like alms that keep the beggar alive today so...

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

On hearing of the interesting events which have happened in the course of a man's experience, many p...

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

Men are like children, in that, if you spoil them, they become naughty. Therefore it is well not to ...

There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escap...

When we see that almost everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encounter...

To measure a man's happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to get, is as fut...

If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive in...

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no mo...

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidentl...

Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of ones own.

Truth is most beautiful undraped.

No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author's thoughts; and the value of these ...

[A]t bottom it is the same with traveling as with reading. How often do we complain that we cannot r...

For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indee...

It is easy to understand that in the dreary middle ages the Aristotelian logic would be very accepta...

What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secu...

All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as ...

Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would b...

[Materialism] seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the o...

optimism, where it is not just the thoughtless talk of someone with only words in his flat head, str...

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

Only by the aid of language does reason bring about its most important achievements, namely the harm...

Any book which is at all important should be re-read immediately.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to become personal yourself. For by...

However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule, not so hard as it may seem from a long way o...

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continu...

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, and to banish all doubt as to the right way of...

I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing fr...

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

Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.

Spirit? Who is that fellow? And where do you know him from? Is he perhaps not merely an arbitrary an...

Health so far outweighs all external goods that a healthy beggars is truly more fortunate than a kin...

Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be...

the origin of wickedness is the cliff upon which theism, just as much as pantheism, is wrecked; for ...

The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the lig...

There is nothing to be got in the world anywhere; privation and pain pervade it, and boredom lies in...

God, who in the beginning was the creator, appears in the end as revenger and rewarder. Deference to...

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

Every society requires mutual accommodation and mutually agreeable temper; hence the larger it is, t...

The ingenious person will above all strive for freedom from pain and annoyance, for tranquility and ...

So if you have to live amongst men, you must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with th...

Common people are merely intent on spending time - whoever has some talent, on making use of it.

In general, nine-tenths of our happiness depends on our health alone.

Very often inertia, selfishness, and vanity play the greatest role in our trust in others; inertia w...

Genius lives only one storey above madness

If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-...

Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature. Only he who writes entirely for...

If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other ai...

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who...

A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

That the Negroes were enslaved more than other races, and on a large scale, is evidently a result of...

All geniuses are peculiarly inclined to solitude, to which they are driven as much by their differen...

There are tree main bulwarks of defence against new thoughts: to pay no heed, to give no credence, a...

Everywhere where detestable Islam has not yet driven out the ancient, profound religions of humanity...

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.

What light is to the outer physical world intellect is to the inner world of consciousness. For inte...

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love...

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; ...

To free a man from error is not to deprive him of anything but to give him something: for the knowle...

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to writ...

Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. They belong not to one system, one n...

Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion has two fa...

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so yo...

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource prid...

There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the alte...

The true basis and propaedeutic for all knowledge of human nature is the persuasion that a man's act...

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your t...

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them but as a rule the pur...

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the...

Fame is something which must be won honour is something which must not be lost.

Vladimir Kush , Shell Bronze , Lovers Entwined (painting)“Why, then, does the man in love hang with ...

Each day is a little life every waking and rising a little birth every fresh morning a little yout...

There is an underlying unity in all things

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

From *the form of time and of the single dimension* of the series of representations, on account of ...

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late look upon it as the quintessence of life and to a ce...

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong when it is qui...

How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect...

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the h...

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

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

The Jews are the scum of the earth, but they are also great masters in lying.

Pride is the direct appreciation of oneself.

The art of not reading is a very important one. [. . .] [Y]ou should remember that he who writes for...

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it...

Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror.

Money is human happiness in the abstract.

It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are ...