Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

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The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance off.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech...As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere...When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence.

Arthur Schopenhauer
I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the absurd and the senseless, standing in universal admiration and honour.

Arthur Schopenhauer
It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.

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

Arthur Schopenhauer
Every new born being indeed comes fresh and blithe into the new existence, and enjoys it as a free gift: but there is, and can be, nothing freely given. It's fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of a worn out existence which has perished, but which contained the indestructible seed out of which the new existence has arisen: they are one being.

Arthur Schopenhauer
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

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

Arthur Schopenhauer
Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to dramatic art, for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life; because that is the only reality, all else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand, such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly: for that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth a serious effort.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Consider the Koran... this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

Arthur Schopenhauer
In philosophy at the universities truth occupies only a secondary place and, if called upon, she must get up and make room for another attribute.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Not to go to the theater is like making one's toilet without a mirror.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine. It isn't money, for genius seldom gets any. It isn't fame: fame is too uncertain and, more closely considered, of too little worth. Nor is it strictly for its own pleasure, for the great exertion involved almost outweighs the pleasure. It is rather an instinct of a unique sort by virtue of which the individual possessed of genius is impelled to express what he has seen and felt in enduring works without being conscious of any further motivation. It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.

Arthur Schopenhauer
A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.

Arthur Schopenhauer
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
Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

Arthur Schopenhauer
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
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself.

Arthur Schopenhauer
That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by a machine.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.

Arthur Schopenhauer
A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.

Arthur Schopenhauer