Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.

The power of religious dogma, when inculcated early, is such as to stifle conscience, compassion, and finally every feeling of humanity.

Time is that by which at every moment all things become as nothing in our hands, and thereby lose all their true value.

It is just as little necessary for the saint to be a philosopher as for the philosopher to be a saint; just as it is not necessary for a perfectly beautiful person to be a great sculptor, or for a sculptor to be himself a beautiful person. In general it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.

One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.

It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes so much to the delight we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified, and in some respects they make us feel the value of every hour that is free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard.

For to kill a man in a fair fight, is to prove that you are superior to him in strength or skill; and to justify the deed, you must assume that the right of the stronger is really a right.

A solidão é a sorte de todos os espíritos excepcionais.

every man is pent up within the limits of his own consciousness, and cannot directly get beyond those limits any more than he can get beyond his own skin;

La felicidad pertenece a los que bastan a sí mismos.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them l

Belief is like love: it cannot be compelled; and as any attempt to compel love produces hate, so it is the attempt to compel belief which first produces real unbelief.

That you should write down valuable ideas that occur to you as soon as possible goes without saying: we sometimes forget even what we have done, so how much more what we have thought. Thoughts, however, come not when we but when they want. On

Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what we mean by boredom.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else

If this world were populated with really thinking beings, it would be impossible for all kinds of noise to be permitted and given such unlimited scope, even the most terrible and purposeless. But if nature had intended man for thinking, she would not have given him ears, or at any rate would have furnished them with air-tight flaps, as with bats whom for this reason I envy.

It is not ferocity but cunning that strikes fear into the heart and forebodes danger; so true it is that the human brain is a more terrible weapon than the lion's paw.

En büyük bilgelik ÅŸu andan zevk almay? hayat?n en büyük amac? k?lmakt?r, çünkü tek gerçek budur, baÅŸka her ÅŸey düÅŸünce oyunudur. Ama bunun en büyük budalal???m?z olduÄŸunu da söyleyebiliriz, çünkü yaln?zca k?sa bir süre için var olan ve bir rüya gibi kaybolan içinde bulunduÄŸumuz bu an asla ciddi bir çabaya deÄŸmez.

Life is an unpleasant business. I have resolved to spend mine reflecting on it.

It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable.

Phil. Look what you are doing! When you say, I—I—I want to exist you alone do not say this, but everything, absolutely everything, that has only a vestige of consciousness. Consequently this desire of yours is just that which is not individual but which is common to all without distinction.

There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy.

If he has a soul above the common, or if he is a man of genius, he will occasionally feel like some noble prisoner of state, condemned to work in the galleys with common criminals; and he will follow his example and try to isolate himself.