Arthur Schopenhauer - Life Quotes

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Human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The suicide wills life, and is only dissatisfied with the conditions under which it has presented itself to him.

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
The life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.

Arthur Schopenhauer
You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The truth can wait, for she lives a long life.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain… Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves.

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
It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of Time and Space.

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
That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom...

Arthur Schopenhauer
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
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
The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.

Arthur Schopenhauer
There is only one inborn erroneous notion … that we exist in order to be happy … So long as we persist in this inborn error … the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence … hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of … disappointment.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man's happiness as its aim and object. Starting from this, everyone then believes he has the most legitimate claim to happiness and enjoyment. If, as usually happens, these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he suffers an injustice, in fact that he misses the whole point of his existence.

Arthur Schopenhauer
In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

Arthur Schopenhauer
There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome — to be got over.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
To Christoph Martin Wieland in April 1811

Arthur Schopenhauer
Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.

Arthur Schopenhauer
We see in tragedy the noblest men, after a long conflict and suffering, finally renounce forever all the pleasure of life and the aims till then pursued so keenly, or cheerfully and willingly give up life itself.

Arthur Schopenhauer