Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

“To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it.”

“There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity. All young people should be taught now to put up with loneliness ... because the less man is compelled to come into contact with others, the better off he is.”

“Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.”

“I observed once to Goethe that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself.”

“A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt.”

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

“Anyone can squash a bug but all professors of this world couldn't build one.”

“Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood.”

“Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.”

“A book can never be anything more than the impression of its author’s thoughts. The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in which he develops his matter — that is to say, what he has thought about it.”

“Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.”

“The life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.”

“Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.”

“...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.”

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

“Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.”

“There is only one healing force, and that is nature; in pills and ointments there is none. At most they can give the healing force of nature a hint about where there is something for it to do.”

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

“My body and my will are one.”

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

“To read a book is to hold an entire world in the palm of your hand. That world is unique to you; no two readers can ever inhabit the same world”

“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.”

“Many books serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up.”

“For the purpose of acquiring gain, everything else is pushed aside or thrown overboard, for example, as is philosophy by the professors of philosophy.”

“The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it.”