A German philosopher who was deeply influenced by the ideas of the German Dominican theologian, mystic, and eclectic philosopher Meister Eckhart, the German mystic and theosophist Jakob Boehme, and other great scholars of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. He is most famous for his work The World as Will and Representation.
He is commonly known for having espoused a sort of philosophical pessimism that saw life as being essentially evil and futile. He was also influenced by Eastern thought, so he saw hope in aesthetics, sympathy for others, and ascetic living. His ideas profoundly influenced the fields of philosophy, psychology, and literature. (1788-1860)
– Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes-
All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what no body yet has thought about that which everyone sees. … But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, ”Lighthouses” as the poet said ”erected in the sea of time.” They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
No one can transcend their own individuality.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else… Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
My guiding star in all seriousness has been truth. Following it, I could first aspire only to my own approval, entirely averted from an age that has sunk low as regards all higher intellectual efforts, and from a national literature demoralised but for the exceptions, a literature in which the art of combining lofty words with low sentiments has reached its zenith.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
A word too much always defeats its purpose.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the conscience.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
For the incredibly great majority of men are by their nature absolutely incapable of any but material aims; they cannot even comprehend any others. Accordingly, the pursuit of truth alone is a pursuit far too lofty and eccentric for us to expect that all or many, or indeed even a mere few, will sincerely take part in it.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Fame is something that must be won. Honor is something that must not be lost.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The present is the only reality and the only certainty.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Time is that in which all things pass away.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
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 dearth.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
People of wealth and the so called upper class suffer the most from boredom.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome –to be got over.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
