Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.

I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.

Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.

If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked.

A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be true.

there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

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

After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts.

Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of ones own.

Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls. - On Religion

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy... So long as we persist in this inborn error... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in things great and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment.

There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.

To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.

If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.

There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one's efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.

Rascals are always sociable, and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others company.