Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

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.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

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

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

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

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

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.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

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

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

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

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

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

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.