Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

One simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party when the masks are dropped.

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

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

It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad.

A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time.

Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.

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

Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

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

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

Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.

The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.

I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.

The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain… Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves.

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

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.

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.

If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.

The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.

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

the world is my idea