Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

“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.”

“There is one respect in which beasts show real wisdom... their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.”

“It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it.”

“One can forget everything, everything, only not oneself, one's own being.”

“The little incidents and accidents of every day fill us with emotion, anxiety, annoyance, passion, as long as they are close to us, when they appear so big, so important, so serious; but as soon as they are borne down the restless stream of time they lose what significance they had; we think no more of them and soon forget them altogether. They were big only because they were near.”

“Something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing.”

“It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.”

“The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.”

“Whoever wants his judgment to be believed, should express it coolly and dispassionately; for all vehemence springs from the will. And so the judgment might be attributed to the will and not to knowledge, which by its nature is cold.”

“The auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start saying farewell to all uprightness, honesty and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists [Fichte, Schelling and Hegel], first a false pathos, then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair of ever being able to convince.”

“You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.”

“A man's knowledge may be said to be mature, in other words, when it has reached the most complete state of perfection to which he, as an individual, is capable of bringing it, when an exact correspondence is established between the whole of his abstract ideas and the things he has actually perceived for himself. His will mean that each of his abstract ideas rests, directly or indirectly, upon a basis of observation, which alone endows it with any real value; and also that he is able to place every observation he makes under the right abstract idea which belongs to it.”

“Every genius is a great child; he gazes out at the world as something strange, a spectacle, and therefore with purely objective interest”

“Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!”

“there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?”

“Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.”

“We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.”

“There are three stages in the revelation of truth. The first is to be ridiculed, the second is to be resisted and the third is to be considered self-evident.”

“The world is my representation”

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

“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”

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

“Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius.”

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

“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.”