Top 100 Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
#1. A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#4. Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#5. Dialectic is the art of intellectual fencing; and it is only when we so regard it that we can erect it into a branch of knowledge.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#6. Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#7. It is for this
reason that we find that co-existence, which could neither be in
time alone, for time has no contiguity, nor in space alone, for
space has no before, after, or now,
Arthur Schopenhauer
#8. Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#10. Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#11. 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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#13. No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#14. Health so far outweighs all external goods that a healthy beggars is truly more fortunate than a king in poor health.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#15. Life is never beautiful, but only the pictures of life are so in the transfiguring mirror of art or poetry; especially in youth, when we do not yet know it. Many a youth would receive great peace of mind if one could assist him to this knowledge.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#16. 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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#17. ...officers in the army, (except those in the highest positions), are paid most inadequately for the services they perform; and the deficiency is made up by honor, which is represented by titles and orders, and, in general, by the system of rank and distinction.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#18. 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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#19. We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#20. Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#21. Every fulfilled wish we wrest from the world is really like alms that keep the beggar alive today so that he can starve again tomorrow.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#22. We, the salt of the earth, should endeavor to follow, by never letting anything disturb us in the pursuit of our intellectual life, however much the storm of the world may invade and agitate our personal environment.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#23. The negativity of well-being and happiness, in antithesis to the positivity of pain.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#24. To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#25. The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father the former has intellect; the latter genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#26. [T]he moralists of Europe [have] pretended that beasts have no rights ... a doctrine revolting/gross/barbarous ... on which a native of the Asiatic uplands could not look without righteous horror ...
Arthur Schopenhauer
#28. Faith is like love, it cannot be forced. Therefore it is a dangerous operation if an attempt be made to introduce or bind it by state regulations; for, as the attempt to force love begets hatred, so also to compel religious belief produces rank unbelief.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#29. If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose conversation you happen to overhear, you should imagine that you are listening to a dialogue of two fools in a comedy.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#30. Every Man Mistakes the Limits of His Vision For The Limits Of The World..
Arthur Schopenhauer
#31. To be irritated by trifles, a man must be well off; for in misfortunes trifles are unfelt. SECTION
Arthur Schopenhauer
#32. there are times when children
might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not
to death, but to life,
Arthur Schopenhauer
#33. (Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#35. 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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#36. Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#37. 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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#38. 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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#39. Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious ... and consequently the concentration of all desire
Arthur Schopenhauer
#40. Materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#42. To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#43. Happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#44. You can also look upon our life as an episode unprofitably disturbing the blessed calm of nothingness.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#45. All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; Third, it is accepted as self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#47. The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#49. Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#50. What a person is for himself, what abides with him in his loneliness and isolation, and what no one can give or take away from him, this is obviously more essential for him than everything that he possesses or what he may be in the eyes of others ...
Arthur Schopenhauer
#52. The more distinctly a man knows, the more intelligent he is, the more pain he has; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#53. Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#55. Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#56. Exaggeration in every sense is as essential to newspaper writing as it is to the writing of plays: for the point is to make as much as possible of every occurrence. So that all newspaper writers are, for the sake of their trade, alarmists: this is their way of making themselves interesting.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#58. The brut first knows death when it dies, but man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives; and this makes his life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised this character of constant anaihilation in the whole of life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#59. The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings ... The world in which a person lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he or she looks at it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#60. If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#61. It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#62. It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#63. Man is the only animal which causes pain to others with no other object than causing pain ... No animal ever torments another for the sake of tormenting: but man does so, and it is this which constitutes the diabolical nature which is far worse than the merely bestial
Arthur Schopenhauer
#64. A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#65. Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#66. Empirical sciences prosecuted purely for their own sake, and without philosophic tendency are like a face without eyes.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#67. Said in reference to Ludwig Wittgenstein: Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target others cannot even see.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#68. Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#70. [T]he appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#71. Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#72. 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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#73. Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others and denies nothing to itself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#75. That you should write down valuable ideas that occur to you as soon as possible goes without saying: we sometimes forget even what we have done, so how much more what we have thought.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#76. If anyone wishes for entertainment, such as will prevent him feeling solitary even when he is alone, let me recommend the company of dogs, whose moral and intellectual qualities may almost afford delight and gratification.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#79. Rascals are always sociable, and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others company.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#80. To such an one we speak as those who are like us have spoken to us, and have so become our comfort in the wilderness of this life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#81. We see in tragedy the noblest men, after a long conflict and suffering, finally renounce forever all the pleasure of life and the aims till then pursued so keenly, or cheerfully and
willingly give up life itself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#82. The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#83. Our greatest sufferings do not lie in the present, as intuitive representations or immediate feeling, but rather in reason, as abstract concepts, tormenting thoughts.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#84. Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#85. 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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#86. There are three stages in the revelation of truth. The first is to be ridiculed, the second is to be resisted and the third is to be considered self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#87. Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#89. Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#90. A genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#91. Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#92. The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#93. We are all innocent to begin with, and this merely means that neither we nor others know the evil of our own nature.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#95. Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favors.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#97. We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#98. In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#99. All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#100. In many cases hate a person is rooted in the involuntary estimate of its virtues.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
