Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"Compassion is the basis of morality."

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

"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."

"First it is ridiculed,Second it is violently opposed,-finally it is accepted as self evident"

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