Words matter. These are the best Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
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.
There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.
The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
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.
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
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.
If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
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.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.
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.
The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.
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.
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
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.
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!
To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.
Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.
It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
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.
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.
It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.
In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
Music is the melody whose text is the world.
Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
