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Arthur Schopenhauer

193 quotes

“Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous .... Photography … offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the strata of the earth preserve in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expositions, which like the former were very lively and made a great commotion in their own age but now stand petrified and stiff in a place where only the literary palaeontologist regards them.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol. 2 "On Books and Writing" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
“Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol. 2 "On Various Subjects" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
“The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves it to the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol. 2 "On Philosophy and the Intellect" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
“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 (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol. 2 "Further Psychological Observations" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
“Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol. 2 "On Women" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
“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 (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument — a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself — in solitude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In youth it is the outward aspect of things that most engages us; while in age, thought or reflection is the predominating quality of the mind. Hence, youth is the time for poetry, and age is more inclined to philosophy. In practical affairs it is the same: a man shapes his resolutions in youth more by the impression that the outward world makes upon him; whereas, when he is old, it is thought that determines his actions.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Allerdings ist das Leben nicht eigentlich da, um genossen, sondern um überstanden, abgethan zu werden...”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say defunctus est; it means that the man has done his task.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence?”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are old, after being separated for a life-time, the chief feeling they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much — and then performed so little.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives in America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, 'Thou shalt make no graven image”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood; the pain is brief, the joy unending.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...in der ganzen Natur, mit dem Grad der Intelligenz die Fähigkeit zum Schmerze sich steigert, also ebenfalls erst hier ihre höchste Stufe erreicht.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Die Wahrheit kann warten: denn sie hat ein langes Leben vor sich.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Willen in der Natur (On the Will in Nature), 1836; in the chapter Einleitung (Introduction)
“If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From The Total Library by Jorge Luis Borges, 1999
“As my own father was sick, and miserably tied to his invalid's chair, he would have been abandoned had not an old servant performed for him a so-called service of love. My mother gave parties while he was perishing in solitude, and amused herself while he was suffering bitter agonies”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Der allgemeine Ueberblick zeigt uns, als die beiden Feinde des menschlichen Glückes, den Schmerz und die Langeweile.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world "God" is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word "world".”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Pantheism as quoted in Faiths of Famous Men in Their Own Words (1900) by John Kenyon Kilbourn; also in Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays (2007), p. 40
“Jede menschliche Vollkommenheit ist einem Fehler verwandt, in welchen überzugehn sie droht.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alles Wollen entspringt aus Bedürfnis, also aus Mangel, also aus Leiden.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Es gibt nur eine Heilkraft, und das ist die Natur; in Salben und Pillen steckt keine. Höchstens können sie der Heilkraft der Natur einen Wink geben, wo etwas für sie zu tun ist.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So that it will be found that the fundamental fault in the character of women is that they have no “sense of justice .” This arises from their deficiency in the power of reasoning already referred to, and reflection, but is also partly due to the fact that Nature has not destined them, as the weaker sex, to be dependent on strength but on cunning; this is why they are instinctively crafty, and have an ineradicable tendency to lie.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A book can never be anything more than the impression of its author’s thoughts [Ein Buch kann nie mehr seyn, als der Abdruck der Gedanken des Verfassers]. The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in which he develops his matter — that is to say, what he has thought about it.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For a work to become immortal it must possess so many excellences that it will not be easy to find a man who understands and values them all; so that there will be in all ages men who recognise and appreciate some of these excellences; by this means the credit of the work will be retained throughout the long course of centuries and ever-changing interests, for, as it is appreciated first in this sense, then in that, the interest is never exhausted.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source