Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes (155 Quotes)




    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.

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



    How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.

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

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


    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.

    If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much energy left for anything else whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease

    Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom


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

    Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.

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

    The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arise from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost

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

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

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


    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.


    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.

    To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

    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.

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

    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.

    Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.

    Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!


    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.


    In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

    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.

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

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

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



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

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

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

    The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.



    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.


    More Arthur Schopenhauer Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Life - Mind - World - Time - Death & Dying - Books - Money & Wealth - Pain - Characters - People - Facts - Stupidity - Fame - Error & Mistake - Happiness - Education - Art - Honor - View All Arthur Schopenhauer Quotations

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    Sun Tzu - Lao Tzu - Heraclitus - George Santayana - Xenophanes - Roger Bacon - Mohammad Khatami - Marquis de Condorcet - Leo Strauss - Guru Nanak


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