Arthur Schopenhauer aphorisms, quotes, words of wisdom, philosophical synthetic ideas, conception of the world, phenomenology and will, pessimism and attitudes.
Born in Danzig, Poland, February 22, 1788, Schopenhauer was educated at the universities of Göttingen, Berlin, and Jena. In his principal work, The World as Will and Idea (1819; trans. 1883), he proposed the dominant ethical and metaphysical elements of his atheistic and pessimistic philosophy.
For Schopenhauer the tragedy of life arises from the nature of the will, which constantly urges the individual toward the satisfaction of successive goals, none of which can provide permanent satisfaction for the infinite activity of the life force, or will. This conception of the source of life in will came to Schopenhauer through insights into the nature of consciousness as essentially impulsive. He revealed a strong Buddhist influence in his metaphysics and a successful confluence of Buddhist and Christian ideas in his ethical doctrines. From the epistemological point of view, Schopenhauer’s ideas belonged to the school of phenomenology.
Renowned for his hostile attitude toward women, Schopenhauer subsequently applied his insights to a consideration of the principles underlying human sexual activity, arguing that individuals are driven together not by feelings of sentimental love but by the irrational impulses of the will. The influence of Schopenhauer’s philosophy may be seen in the early works of the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, in the music dramas of the German composer Richard Wagner, and in much of the philosophical and artistic work of the 20th century. Schopenhauer died September 21, 1860.
The two main requirements for philosophizing are: firstly, to have the courage not to keep any question back; and secondly, to attain a clear consciousness of anything that goes without saying so as to comprehend it as a problem.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received. Of itself it has nothing but the empty forms of its operation.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A man has less conscience when in love than in any other condition.
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
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Most men discover when they look back on their life that they have been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.
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
To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.
Arthur Schopenhauer
To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
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
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
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of Time and Space.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The word of man is the most durable of all material.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
Arthur Schopenhauer
There are very many thoughts which have value for him who thinks them, but only a few of them possess the power of engaging the interest of a reader after they have been written down.
Arthur Schopenhauer
In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
Arthur Schopenhauer
There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.
Arthur Schopenhauer
To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.
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
Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Rascals are always sociable, more’s the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others’ company.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
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
I’ve never known any trouble than an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
Arthur Schopenhauer
To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
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
It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.
Arthur Schopenhauer
In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.
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
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
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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness, we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses.
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
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
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
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
We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.
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
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
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
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Women exist in the main solely for the propagation of the species.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
Arthur Schopenhauer
But what do I get from existence? If it is full I have only distress, if empty only boredom. How can you offer me so poor a reward for so much labor and so much suffering?
Arthur Schopenhauer
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Our existence has no foundation on which to rest except the transient present. Thus its form is essentially unceasing motion, without any possibility of that repose which we continually strive after.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
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
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Hypochondria torments us not only with causeless irritation with the things of the present; not only with groundless anxiety on the score of future misfortunes entirely of our own manufacture; but also with unmerited self-reproach for our own past actions.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The thing-in-itself, the will-to-live, exists whole and undivided in every being, even in the tiniest; it is present as completely as in all that ever were, are, and will be, taken together.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
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
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
The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!
Arthur Schopenhauer
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The fundamental fault of the female character is that it has no sense of justice.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.
Arthur Schopenhauer
With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
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
Music is the melody whose text is the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer
If you want to know how you really feel about someone take note of the impression an unexpected letter from him makes on you when you first see it on the doormat.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
Arthur Schopenhauer
If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer
