Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes & Sayings

Every human perfection is allied to a defect into which it threatens to pass, but it is also true that every defect is allied to a perfection. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Since long ago all peoples have recognized that the world, apart from its physical meaning, also has a moral one. Yet everywhere the matter has only come to a vague consciousness, which, as it sought expression, clothed itself in all sorts of images and myths. There are religions. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self evident. — Arthur Schopenhauer

To have lost what cannot be missed is clearly no evil. — Arthur Schopenhauer

For what is not seen is as good as what does not exist. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Boredom is an evil that is not to be estimated lightly. It can come in the end to real despair. The public authority takes precautions against it everywhere, as against other universal calamities. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The origin of wickedness is the cliff upon which theism, just as much as pantheism, is wrecked; for both imply optimism. However, evil and sin, both in their terrible magnitude, cannot be disavowed; indeed, because of the promised punishments for the latter, the former is only further increased. Whence all this, in a world that is either itself a God or the well-intentioned work of a God? — Arthur Schopenhauer

A man must have grown old and lived long in order to see how short life is. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Therefore it has always been said that music is the language of feeling and of passion, as words are the language of reason. — Arthur Schopenhauer

All wanting comes from need, therefore from lack, therefore from suffering. — Arthur Schopenhauer

For as a rule a man must have worth in himself in order to recognise it and believe in it willingly and freely in others. — Arthur Schopenhauer

He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear; — Arthur Schopenhauer

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. — Arthur Schopenhauer

To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the whole inner nature of the world , and thus to deposit it as a reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty of reason , this and nothing else is philosophy. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Pride works _from within_; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The greatest wisdom consists in enjoying the present and making this enjoyment the goal of life, because the present is all that is real and everything else merely imaginary. But you could just as well call this mode of life the greatest folly: for that which in a moment ceases to exist, which vanishes as completely as a dream, cannot be worth any serious effort. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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

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

For the longer to have had to rack your brains for something the more firmly will is stay once you have got it. — Arthur Schopenhauer

In order to have original, uncommon, and perhaps even immortal thoughts, it is enough to estrange oneself so fully from the world of things for a few moments, that the most ordinary objects and events appear quite new and unfamiliar. In this way their true nature is disclosed. What is here demanded cannot, perhaps, be said to be difficult; it is not in our power at all, but is just the province of genius. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech ... As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere ... When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence. — Arthur Schopenhauer

All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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. — Arthur Schopenhauer

To attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and ... though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely in expectation of which they lived. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Because appearance remains appearance and does not become thing in itself. — Arthur Schopenhauer

For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none? For
whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Mostly the loss teaches us only about the value of things. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Health so far outweighs all external goods that a healthy beggars is truly more fortunate than a king in poor health. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Our greatest sufferings do not lie in the present, as intuitive representations or immediate feeling, but rather in reason, as abstract concepts, tormenting thoughts. — Arthur Schopenhauer

All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany , then everything done by man, and even by animal, is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else; hence there is no ethics. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A spring never free from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses its elasticity; and so does the mind if other people's thoughts are constantly forced upon it. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others. — Arthur Schopenhauer

When a new truth enters the world, the first stage of reaction to it is ridicule, the second stage is violent opposition, and in the third stage, that truth comes to be regarded as self-evident. — Arthur Schopenhauer

To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Will without intellect is the most vulgar and common thing in the world, possessed by every blockhead, who, in the gratification of his passions, shows the stuff of which he is made. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Students and scholars of all kinds and of every age aim, as a rule, only at information, not insight. They make it a point of honour to have information about everything, every stone, plant, battle, or experiment and about all books, collectively and individually. It never occurs to them that information is merely a means to insight, but in itself is of little or no value. — Arthur Schopenhauer

What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', i.e. to escape boredom. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes. — Arthur Schopenhauer

great intelligence in a writer if his similes — Arthur Schopenhauer

We are all innocent to begin with, and this merely means that neither we nor others know the evil of our own nature. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Beauty is an open letter of recommendation that wins hearts for us in advance. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A constant flow of thoughts expressed by other people can stop and deaden your own thought and your own initiative ... . That is why constant learning softens your brain ... . Stopping the creation of your own thoughts to give room for the thoughts from other books reminds me of Shakespeare's remark about his contemporaries who sold their land in order to see other countries. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A human being does at all times only what he wills, and yet does it necessarily. But that rests on the fact that he is what he wills: for out of what he is everything that he does at any time follows necessarily. — Arthur Schopenhauer

If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it. But if you do that you will produce nothing great. If you have something great in view you must address yourself to posterity: only then, to be sure, you will probably remain unknown to your contemporaries; you will be like a man compelled to spend his life on a desert island and there toiling to erect a memorial so that future seafarers shall know he once existed. — Arthur Schopenhauer

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Restlessness is the hallmark of existence. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Ordinary society is, in this respect, very like the kind of music to be obtained from an orchestra composed of Russian horns. Each horn has only one note; and the music is produced by each note coming in just at the right moment. In the monotonous sound of a single horn, you have a precise illustration of the effect of most people's minds. How often there seems to be only one thought there! and no room for any other. It is easy to see why people are so bored; and also why they are sociable, why they like to go about in crowds - why mankind is so gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable. Omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui: folly is truly its own burden. Put a great many men together, and you may get some result - some music from your horns! A — Arthur Schopenhauer

However, for the man who studies to gain insight, books and studies are merely rungs of the ladder on which he climbs to the summit of knowledge. As soon as a rung has raised him up one step, he leaves it behind. On the other hand, the many who study in order to fill their memory do not use the rungs of the ladder for climbing, but take them off and load themselves with them to take away, rejoicing at the increasing weight of the burden. They remain below forever, because they bear what should have bourne them. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The ordinary writer has an unmistakable preference for this style, because it causes the reader to spend time and trouble in understanding that which he would have understood in a moment without it; and this makes it look as though the writer had more depth and intelligence than the reader. This is, indeed, one of those artifices referred to above, by means of which mediocre authors unconsciously, and as it were by instinct, strive to conceal their poverty of thought and give an appearance of the opposite. their ingenuity in this respect is really astounding. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Truth is no prostitute, that throws herself away upon those who do not desire her; she is rather so coy a beauty that he who sacrifices everything to her cannot even then be sure of her favour. — Arthur Schopenhauer

People need external activity because they have no internal activity ... [Hence] the restlessness of those who have nothing to do, and their aimless traveling. What drives them from country to country is the same boredom which at home drives them together into such crowds and heaps it is funny to see. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The public had been forced to see [by Kant's writings] that what is obscure is not always without meaning; what was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make vigorous use of this privilege; Schelling at least equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel. It became the instrument of the most ponderous and general mystification that has ever existed, with a result that will seem incredible to posterity, and be a lasting monument of German stupidity. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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

It may sometimes happen that a truth, an insight, which you have slowly and laboriously puzzled out by thinking for yourself could have easily have been found already written in a book: but it is a hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for yourself. For only then will it enter your thought system as an integral part and living member, be perfectly and firmly consistent with it and in accord with all its other consequences and conclusions, bear the hue, colour and stamp of your whole manner of thinking, and have arrived at just the moment it was needed ; thus it will stay firmly and forever lodged in your mind. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Talent is like a marksman who hits a target which others cannot
reach; genius is like a marksman who hits a target which others cannot see. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The course and affairs of our individual life, in view of their true meaning and connection, are like a piece of crude work in mosaic. So long as one stands close in front of it, one can not correctly see the objects presented, or perceive their importance and beauty; it is only by standing some distance away that both come into view. And in the same way one often understands the true connection of important events in one's own life, not while they are happening, or even immediately after they have happened, but only a long time afterwards. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science. Experience makes us acquainted with the phenomenon in the particular and by means of examples, science embraces the whole of phenomena by means of general conceptions. So poetry seeks to make us acquainted with the Platonic Ideas through the particular and by means of examples. Philosophy aims at teaching, as a whole and in general, the inner nature of things which expresses itself in these. One sees even here that poetry bears more the character of youth, philosophy that of old age. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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. — Arthur Schopenhauer

And to this world, to this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who only continue to exist by devouring each other, in which, therefore, every ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths; and in which the capacity for feeling pain increases with knowledge, and therefore reaches its highest degree in man, a degree which is the higher the more intelligent the man is; to this world it has been sought to apply the system of optimism, and demonstrate to us that it is the best of all possible worlds. The absurdity is glaring. — Arthur Schopenhauer

It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Authority and example lead the world. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The first rule for a good style is to have something to say; in fact, this in itself is almost enough. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The right to or claim on something means nothing more than to do it, or take it or be able to use it without in any way thereby injuring another: simplicity is the sign of the true. This sheds light on the meaninglessness of the same questions, e.g. whether we have the right to take our own life. But as concerns the claims that others could personally have upon us, they rest upon the condition that we are living, and therefore cease if the condition ceases. That the one who no longer wants to live for himself should now continue to live merely as a machine for the use of others is an extravagant demand. — Arthur Schopenhauer

There are, in the capacities of mankind, three varieties: one man will understand a thing by himself; another so far as it is explained to him; a third, neither of himself nor when it is put clearly before him. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Under presupposition of free will each human action would be an inexplicable miracle - an effect without cause. And if one dares the attempt to make such a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae imaginable to oneself, one will soon become aware that here the understanding quite genuinely comes to a standstill: it has no form for thinking of such a thing. — Arthur Schopenhauer

And, as a general rule, it is more advisable to show your intelligence by saying nothing than by speaking out; for silence is a matter of prudence whilst speech has something in it of vanity — Arthur Schopenhauer

It can truly be said: Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls. — Arthur Schopenhauer

For to start life with just as much as will make one independent, that is, allow one to live comfortably without having to work - even if one has only just enough for oneself, not to speak of a family - is an advantage which cannot be over-estimated; for it means exemption and immunity from that chronic disease of penury, which fastens on the life of man like a plague; it is emancipation from that forced labor which is the natural lot of every mortal. Only under a favorable fate like this can a man be said to be born free, to be, in the proper sense of the word, sui juris, master of his own time and powers, and able to say every morning, This day is my own. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost are and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Most men are so thoroughly subjective that nothing really interests them but themselves. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Life presents itself as a continual deception, in small matters as well as in great. If it has promised, it does not keep its word, unless to show how little desirable the desired object was; hence we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises that vanish like optical illusions, when we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by them. Accordingly, happiness lies always in the future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. Consequently, the present is always inadequate, but the future is uncertain, and the past irrecoverable. — Arthur Schopenhauer

True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself. — Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no happiness on earth to compare with that which a beautiful and fruitful mind finds in a propitious hour within itself. — Arthur Schopenhauer

If people insist that honor is dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we are to make any progress in the world. — Arthur Schopenhauer

This our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is-nothing. — Arthur Schopenhauer

To be alone is the fate of all great minds - a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.
I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be true. — Arthur Schopenhauer

We should comfort ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages-stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its own use. Yet even the human race ... reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance of the will with itself; and we find homo homini lupus. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The Jews are the scum of the earth, but they are also great masters in lying. — Arthur Schopenhauer