Schopenhauer Quotes

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 hamonized; it is true to life.

Pride works _from within_; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must.

Das Ganze der Erfahrung gleicht einer Geheimschrift und die Philosophie der Entzifferung derselben. The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy is like the deciphering of it.

Authority and example lead the world.

Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself.

At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity.

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

...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is-nothing.

On the path of actions, great heart is the chief recommendation; on that works, a great head.

The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood; the pain is brief, the joy unending.

Motives are causes experienced from within.

Truth is most beautiful undraped.

If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.

If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the miseries of boredom.

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.

Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones.

Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with great riches.

That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject.

Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.

A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.

Most men are so thoroughly subjective that nothing really interests them but themselves.

It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.

Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism.

To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it.

It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad.

For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it.

A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time.

All wanting comes from need, therefore from lack, therefore from suffering.

It is not what things are objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the reverse.

The beard, being a half-mask, should be forbidden by the police - It is, moreover, as a sexual symbol in the middle of the face, obscene: that is why it pleases women.

Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious... and consequently the concentration of all desire

Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)

Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood.

The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it.

Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.

It is only when a man is alone that he is really free.

To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them.

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.

The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.

Something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing.

Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.

Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.

there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

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.

Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety valve is to the steam engine.

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.

Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.

A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.