Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
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.
Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.
Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.
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.
Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
If anyone spends almost the whole day in reading...he gradually loses the capacity for thinking...This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid
Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.
We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack. Therefore, rather than grateful, we are bitter.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
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.
The Universe is a dream dreamed by a single dreamer where all the dream characters dream too.
In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death.
There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
When you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it's a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect.
There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.
If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.
The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.
The life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.
If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked.
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
