Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science. Experience makes us acquainted with the phenomenon in the particular and by means of examples, science embraces the whole of phenomena by means of general conceptions. So poetry seeks to make us acquainted with the Platonic Ideas through the particular and by means of examples. Philosophy aims at teaching, as a whole and in general, the inner nature of things which expresses itself in these. One sees even here that poetry bears more the character of youth, philosophy that of old age.

The truth can wait, for it lives a long life.

My body and my will are one.

If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.

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.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

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.

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

It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad.

Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible

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

It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.

Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.

Each day is a little life.

A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.

There is a wide difference between the original thinker and the merely learned man.

Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light.

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.

One can forget everything, everything, only not oneself, one's own being.

Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.

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.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

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.

The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.

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

Anyone can squash a bug but all professors of this world couldn't build one.

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.

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

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulse that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race.

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish

What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.

A hedge between keeps friendship green.

... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and at the same time, all-powerful being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

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.

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

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

You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.

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

The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.

You must treat a work of art like a great man: stand before it and wait patiently till it deigns to speak.

I observed once to Goethe that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself.

The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves itto the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.

Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.

Night gives a black look to everything, whatever it may be.