Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

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That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject.

Arthur Schopenhauer
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.

Arthur Schopenhauer
A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name

Arthur Schopenhauer
A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.

Arthur Schopenhauer
One man is more concerned with the impression he makes on the rest of mankind, another with the impression the rest of mankind makes on him.

Arthur Schopenhauer
All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany, then everything done by man, and even by animal, is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else; hence there is no ethics.

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

Arthur Schopenhauer
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.

Arthur Schopenhauer
What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering-from positive evil.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind.

Arthur Schopenhauer
If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease.

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
A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles, for then he is off his guard.

Arthur Schopenhauer
What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The little incidents and accidents of every day fill us with emotion, anxiety, annoyance, passion, as long as they are close to us, when they appear so big, so important, so serious; but as soon as they are borne down the restless stream of time they lose what significance they had; we think no more of them and soon forget them altogether. They were big only because they were near.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the conscience.

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
A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of applying the maxim, Know Thyself.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favourably received at first.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Consider that chance, which, with error, its brother, and folly, its aunt, and malice, its grandmother, rules in this world; which every year and every day, by blows great and small, embitters the life of every son of earth, and yours too.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Honour is external conscience, and conscience is inward honour.

Arthur Schopenhauer