The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.

I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.

When I see a spade, I call it a spade. I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use it. It's the only thing he's fit for.

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!

To live in this world is a rare thing; most people just exist.

It's not hard to get the ideas when they come. They just come... it's painful waiting for them.

Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterize modern thought, but Hamlet invented it