Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

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Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

Arthur Schopenhauer
For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none? For whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will.

Arthur Schopenhauer
It may be said that religion is the chef d'oeuvre of the art of training, because it trains people in the way that shall think: and, as is well known, you cannot begin the process too early.

Arthur Schopenhauer
We take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Pride is an established conviction of one's own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

Arthur Schopenhauer
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Arthur Schopenhauer
If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are old, after being separated for a life-time, the chief feeling they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much — and then performed so little.

Arthur Schopenhauer
[People] are like sheep following the bell-wether just as he leads them. They would sooner die than think.

Arthur Schopenhauer
There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity. All young people should be taught now to put up with loneliness... because the less man is compelled to come into contact with others, the better off he is.

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

Arthur Schopenhauer
A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.

Arthur Schopenhauer
I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.

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
I am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again by the stupidity, of my dog; and I have similar experiences with mankind.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Das Ganze der Erfahrung gleicht einer Geheimschrift und die Philosophie der Entzifferung derselben. The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy is like the deciphering of it.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Rudeness is better than any argument; it totally eclipses intellect.

Arthur Schopenhauer
I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant's works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.

Arthur Schopenhauer
For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care.

Arthur Schopenhauer
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.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself.... Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it.

Arthur Schopenhauer