Schopenhauer Quotes
Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.
For the purpose of acquiring gain, everything else is pushed aside or thrown overboard, for example, as is philosophy by the professors of philosophy.
All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.
No doubt, when modesty was made a virtue, it was a very advantageous thing for the fools, for everybody is expected to speak of himself as if he were one.
...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.
The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.
In truth the most striking figure for the relation of the two is that of the strong blind man carrying the sighted lame man on his shoulders.
This actual world of what is knowable, in which we are and which is in us, remains both the material and the limit of our consideration.
The faculty for remembering is not diminished in proportion to what one has learnt, just as little as the number of moulds in which you cast sand lessens its capacity for being cast in new moulds.
Where there is no love, a person's faithfulness to the marriage bond is probably against nature.
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.
The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.
Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.
Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.
Just as the witticism brings two very different real objects under one concept, the pun brings two different concepts, by the assistance of accident, under one word.
A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt.
The first rule for a good style is to have something to say; in fact, this in itself is almost enough.
Gaiety alone, as it were, is the hard cash of happiness; everything else is just a promissory note.
The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favourably received at first.
Every human perfection is allied to a defect into which it threatens to pass, but it is also true that every defect is allied to a perfection.
The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another.
In many cases hate a person is rooted in the involuntary estimate of its virtues.
There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake.
It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it.
If God made this world, then i would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart.
He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts.
There are three stages in the revelation of truth. The first is to be ridiculed, the second is to be resisted and the third is to be considered self-evident.
A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles, for then he is off his guard.
We should comfort ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages-stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us.
Boredom is an evil that is not to be estimated lightly. It can come in the end to real despair. The public authority takes precautions against it everywhere, as against other universal calamities.
Empirical sciences prosecuted purely for their own sake, and without philosophic tendency are like a face without eyes.
... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)
To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
