"We deceive and flatter no one by..." - Quote by Arthur Schopenhauer
We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.
More by Arthur Schopenhauer
“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.”
“The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood; the pain is brief, the joy unending.”
“Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.”
More on Self Deception
“People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.”
“Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.”
“Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.”
More on Human Nature
“Some of our weaknesses are born in us, others are the result of education; it is a question which of the two gives us most trouble.”
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. For the least sin, it wouldn't take us longTo get so we had no one left to live with.For to be social is to be forgiving.”
“The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”