Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

359 Sourced Quotes

It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter—an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.

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

Arthur Schopenhauer
Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say defunctus est; it means that the man has done his task.

Arthur Schopenhauer
To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The word of man is the most durable of all material.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.

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

Arthur Schopenhauer
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Rascals are always sociable — more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.

Arthur Schopenhauer
In their hearts women think that it is men's business to earn money and theirs to spend it.

Arthur Schopenhauer
To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Philosophy … is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.

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
Philosophy of religion … really amounts to … philosophizing on certain favorite assumptions that are not confirmed at all.

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
A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.

Arthur Schopenhauer
It can truly be said: Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.

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
If, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of our contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the temple of truth?

Arthur Schopenhauer
Whatever torch we kindle, and whatever space it may illuminate, our horizon will always remain encircled by the depth of night.

Arthur Schopenhauer
In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.

Arthur Schopenhauer
No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that moral character is unalterable: a single bad action implies that future actions of the same kind will, under similar circumstances, also be bad.

Arthur Schopenhauer
For a work to become immortal it must possess so many excellences that it will not be easy to find a man who understands and values them all; so that there will be in all ages men who recognise and appreciate some of these excellences; by this means the credit of the work will be retained throughout the long course of centuries and ever-changing interests, for, as it is appreciated first in this sense, then in that, the interest is never exhausted.

Arthur Schopenhauer