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Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer


Compassion is the basis of all morality.
– Arthur Schopenhauer

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that moral character is unalterable: a single bad action implies that future actions of the same kind will, under similar circumstances, also be bad.
– 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
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but is also a disruption of thought.
– 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 care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
– 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
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Music is the melody whose text is the world.
– 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
Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another but women are by nature enemies.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Hatred is an affair of the heart contempt that of the head.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!
– Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
– Arthur Schopenhauer
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
– Arthur Schopenhauer