Schopenhauer Quotes

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

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

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

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

Compassion is the basis of all morality

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.

Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανάτου μελέτη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise.

Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy...

Time is that by which at every moment all things become as nothing in our hands, and thereby lose all their true value.

Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.

... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them.(Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)

Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of ones own.

There is an underlying unity in all things

Marrying means to halve one's rights and double one's duties

There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!

It is for this reason that we find that co-existence, which could neither be intime alone, for time has no contiguity, nor in space alone, forspace has no before, after, or now,

There are tree main bulwarks of defence against new thoughts: to pay no heed, to give no credence, and finally to assert that it had already long existed.

If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world.

One simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured.

It will generally be found that as soon the terrors of live reach the point where they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life.

The Jews are the scum of the earth, but they are also great masters in lying.

Rascals are always sociable, and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others company.

Health so far outweighs all external goods that a healthy beggars is truly more fortunate than a king in poor health.

In general, nine-tenths of our happiness depends on our health alone.

Everywhere where detestable Islam has not yet driven out the ancient, profound religions of humanity with fire and sword, my ascetic results would have to fear the reproach of being trivial

Education stuffs you full of ideas without the coinciding experience that gave rise to those ideas in the first place, giving you incorrect perspective and notions.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. The higher the interest rate and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed

For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it.

Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.

A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.

To measure a man's happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to get, is as futile as to try and express a fraction which shall have a numerator but no denominator.

Common people are merely intent on spending time - whoever has some talent, on making use of it.

Genius lives only one storey above madness

Every fulfilled wish we wrest from the world is really like alms that keep the beggar alive today so that he can starve again tomorrow.

You can do what you will: but at each given moment of your life you can will only one determined thing and by no means anything other than this one.

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.

A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror.

We should comport ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages - stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us.

Any book which is at all important should be re-read immediately.

Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the business man.

Gaiety alone as it were is the hard cash of happiness everything else is just a promissory note.

The happiness of any given life is to be measured not by its joys and pleasures but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering from positive evil.

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.

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.

Hatred comes from the heart contempt from the head and neither feeling is quite within our control.

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Fame is something which must be won honour is something which must not be lost.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party when the masks are dropped.

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.