Schopenhauer Quotes

Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.

The present is the only reality and the only certainty.

Life is a business that does not cover the costs.

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

Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.

I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.

Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls.

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.

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

There is not a grain of dust, not an atom that can become nothing, yet man believes that death is the annhilation of his being.

Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.

The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.

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

Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people; intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.

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

A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Everything that happens, happens of necessity.

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.

Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.

Intellect is a magnitude of intensity, not a magnitude of extensity.

We seldom speak of what we have but often of what we lack.

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

No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.

The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.

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.

Marrying means doing whatever possible to become repulsed of each other

No one can transcend their own individuality.

True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself.

The reason domestic pets are so lovable and so helpful to us is because they enjoy, quietly and placidly, the present moment.

When a new truth enters the world, the first stage of reaction to it is ridicule, the second stage is violent opposition, and in the third stage, that truth comes to be regarded as self-evident.

To buy books would be a good thing if we could also buy the time to read them; but the purchase of books is often mistaken for the assimilation and mastering of their contents.

A man who has not enough originality to think out a new title for his book will be much less capable of giving it new contents.

You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.

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

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.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

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

Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.

I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.

First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.

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.

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

It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.

I love looking at famous people. Because of the way they look. Because of the way photography makes them look famous.