Arthur Schopenhauer's Quotes

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

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

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

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

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

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.

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

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

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

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

It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

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

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

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

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

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

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

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.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

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

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

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

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

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

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

Compassion is the basis of morality.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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