Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

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People who originally have no means but are ultimately able to earn a great deal, through whatever talents they may possess, almost always come to think that these are permanent capital and that what they gain through them is interest. Accordingly, they do not put aside part of their earnings to form a permanent capital, but spend their money as fast as they earn it. But they are then often reduced to poverty because their earnings decrease or come to an end after their talent, which was of a transitory nature, is exhausted, as happens, for example, in the case of almost all the fine arts; or because it could be brought to bear only under a particular set of circumstances that has ceased to exist.

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
Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.

Arthur Schopenhauer
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
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

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

Arthur Schopenhauer
No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing.

Arthur Schopenhauer
To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.

Arthur Schopenhauer
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
Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to become

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
Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer
It is only the hope of what is claimed that begets and nurishes the wish;

Arthur Schopenhauer
Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. A meteor makes a striking effect for a moment. You look up and cry There! and it is gone forever. Planets and wandering stars last a much longer time. They often outshine the fixed stars... only because they are near. It is not long before they must yield their place.

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
At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity.

Arthur Schopenhauer
He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The faculty for remembering is not diminished in proportion to what one has learnt, just as little as the number of moulds in which you cast sand lessens its capacity for being cast in new moulds.

Arthur Schopenhauer