Arthur Schopenhauer – 42 Quotes

42 Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Hatred is an affair of the heart contempt that of the head.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Talent hits a target no one else can hit Genius hits a target no one else can see.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– 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

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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

– 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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 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