Arthur Schopenhauer quotes:

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

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

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.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

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

It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.

What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.

Marrying means to halve one's rights and double one's duties

... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them.(Paraphrase of 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.

The art lies in setting the inner life into the most violent motion with the smallest possible expenditure of outer life; for it is the inner life which is the real object of our interest - The task of the novelist is not to narrate great events but to make small ones interesting.

A word too much always defeats its purpose."

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."

The fourfold root of the principle of sufficent reason is "Anything perceived has a cause. All conclusions have premises. All effects have causes. All actions have motives."

Orice animal de prada ajunge mormintul viu a inca o mie de alti pradatori si nu rezista in timp decit cu pretul unui lung sir de martirii. Inteligenta mareste capacitatea de a suferii, atingind la om gradul cel mai inalt."

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

Money is human happiness in the abstract.

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.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

Our religions will never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.

Every new born being indeed comes fresh and blithe into the new existence, and enjoys it as a free gift: but there is, and can be, nothing freely given. It's fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of a worn out existence which has perished, but which contained the indestructible seed out of which the new existence has arisen: they are one being.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and at the same time, all-powerful being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be.

The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.

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.

Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious... and consequently the concentration of all desire

What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.

To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.

Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.

We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.

Each day is a little life.

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

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

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.

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

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

To forgive and forget means to throw away dearly bought experience.

there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

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

A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

Happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering-from positive evil.

The greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life; because that is the only reality, all else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand, such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly: for that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth a serious effort.

Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favors.

In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works.

universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

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

The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.

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.

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

It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.

For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care.

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

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.

Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.

What a person is for himself, what abides with him in his loneliness and isolation, and what no one can give or take away from him, this is obviously more essential for him than everything that he possesses or what he may be in the eyes of others...

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

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.

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

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.

Descartes is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains in place whereof the Bible, on the one hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served.

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.

Indeed, intolerance is essential only to monotheism; an only God is by nature a jealous God who will not allow another to live. On the other hand, polytheistic gods are naturally tolerant, they live and let live.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

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

Music is the answer to the mystery of life. The most profound of all the arts, It expresses the deepest thoughts of life.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money.