Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

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.

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

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

A happy life is impos­si­ble; the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.

For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.

[T]he appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres.

The man who sees two or three generations is like one who sits in the conjuror's booth at a fair, and sees the same tricks two or three times. They are meant to be seen only once.

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.

It is most important to allow the brain the full measure of sleep which is required to restore it; for sleep is to a man's whole nature what winding up is to a clock.

Apart from man, no being wonders at its own experience.

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.

The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly hamonized; it is true to life.

Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.

A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.

Most men are so thoroughly subjective that nothing really interests them but themselves.

It is only when a man is alone that he is really free.

To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.

A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of applying the maxim, Know Thyself.

The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another.

The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is made.

It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it.

A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles, for then he is off his guard.

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

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