Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes (155 Quotes)

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

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.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but is also a disruption of thought.

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

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.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.

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

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

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

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident

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.

A word too much always defeats its purpose.

Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death...

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

Truth that has merely been learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose it adheres to us only Because it is put on. But truth acquired by thought of our own is like a natural limb it alone really belongs to us.

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

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 than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America and the introduction of African slaves in their place

That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous. Photography offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

No one can transcend their own individuality.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

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

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.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting

Every parting is a foretaste of death, and every reunion a foretaste of resurrection.

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred.

The middle ages showed us the results of thinking without experimentation, our present centuryshows us what experimentation without thinking leads to.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

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.

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

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

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

On a cold winters day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one anothers quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them closer together again, their quills again forced them apart. They were driven back and forth at the mercy of their discomforts until they found the distance from one another that provided both a maximum of warmth and a minimum of pain. In human beings, the emptiness and monotony of the isolated self produces a need for society. This brings people together, but their many offensive qualities and intolerable faults drive them apart again. The optimum distance that they finally find that permits them to coexist is embodied in politeness and good manners. Because of this distance between us, we can only partially satisfy our need for warmth, but at the same time, we are spared the stab of one anothers quills.

Life is a ticklish business I have resolved to spend it in reflecting upon it

Personal courage is really a very subordinate virtue...in which we are surpassed by the lower animals.

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

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

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