Arthur Schopenhauer

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

The longer a mans fame is likely to last the longer it will be in coming.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

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

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

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.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

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.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

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

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

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

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.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received withdistrust.

Console yourself by remembering that the world doesnt deserve your affection.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

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.

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

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

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.

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

A mans 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 mans thoughts and aspirations.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.

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

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.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man.

Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible

A man can be himself alone so long as he is alone if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone and if he does not love solitude he will not love freedom for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

The power of religious dogma when inculcated early is such as to stifle conscience compassion and finally every feeling of humanity.

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

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

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

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

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

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.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

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.

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

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face especially the eyes.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

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

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

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.

Compassion is the basis of all morality

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

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.

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.

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

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.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

One should use common words to say uncommon things.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

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.

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.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

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

Astrology furnishes a splendid proof of the contemptible subjectivity of men. It refers the course of celestial bodies to the miserable ego: it establishes a connection between the comets in heaven and squabbles and rascalities on earth.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

Newspapers are the second hand of history.

The word of man is the most durable of all material.

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

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.

Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind.

All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality of the forms under which the will to live is objectified.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

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

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

No one can transcend their own individuality.