Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

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

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

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

“Before you take anything away, you must have something better to put in its place.”

“On the path of actions, great heart is the chief recommendation; on that works, a great head.”

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

“It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad.”

“Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself. . . . Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.”

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

“Imagination is strong in a man when that particular function of the brain which enables him to observe is roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the sense. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our sense are not excited by external objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or in a sick room; quiet, twilight, darkness-these are the things that promote its activity; and under their influence it comes into play of itself.”

“Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.”

“Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?”

“There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake.”

“[T]he appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres.”

“In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.”

“Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)”

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

“You must treat a work of art like a great man: stand before it and wait patiently till it deigns to speak.”

“In many cases hate a person is rooted in the involuntary estimate of its virtues.”

“Every satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire, so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will.”

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

“If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the miseries of boredom.”

“Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.”

“No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it.”

“The deep pain that is feltat the death of every friendly soularises from the feeling that there isin every individual somethingwhich is inexpressible,peculiar to him alone,and is, therefore,absolutely and irretrievably lost.”