Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes and Quotations

Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher best known for his book, The World as Will and Representation (German: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung), in which he claimed that our world is driven by a continually dissatisfied will, continually seeking satisfaction. He became a student at the University of Göttingen in 1809. There he studied metaphysics and psychology under Gottlob Ernst Schulze, the author of Aenesidemus, who advised him to concentrate on Plato and Immanuel Kant. In Berlin, from 1811 to 1812, he had attended lectures by the prominent post-Kantian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte and the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher.

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Here is his Quotes,

 

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

 

2.  Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

3. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

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

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

6. After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

7.  A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

8.  If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

9. Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

10. There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

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

12. A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

13. The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

14. Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

15. Rascals are always sociable, mores’ the pity! And the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.

18. Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

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

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

21. Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

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

23. Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

24. A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

25. For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

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

27. Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

28. The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

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

30. The longer a man's fame is likely to last; the longer it will be in coming.

31. Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

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

33. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

34. A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.

35. In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

36. Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

37. Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

38.  Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

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

40. In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

41. In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

42. The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

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

44. The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

 45. Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

46. Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

47. 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.

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

49. Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

50. National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

51. The word of man is the most durable of all material.

52. To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

53. The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

54. 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.

55. Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

56. If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

57. We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

58. The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

59. The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

60. Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

61. As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

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

63. Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

64. The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.