Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

a língua é, para o espírito de uma nação, o que o estilo é para o espírito de um indivíduo. Mas o domínio perfeito de uma língua só ocorre quando uma pessoa é capaz de traduzir não os livros, por exemplo, mas a si própria; desse modo, sem sofrer nenhuma perda de sua individualidade, ela consegue se comunicar imediatamente na outra língua, agradando tanto aos estrangeiros quanto aos falantes nativos.

It would be a great advantage to a young man if his early training could eradicate the idea that the world has a great deal to offer him. But the usual result of education is to strenghten this delusion; and our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than from fact.

Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt.

Before you take anything away you must have something better to put in its place.

It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of its contents.

It will generally be found that as soon the terrors of live reach the point where they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life.

the origin of wickedness is the cliff upon which theism, just as much as pantheism, is wrecked; for both imply optimism. However, evil and sin, both in their terrible magnitude, cannot be disavowed; indeed, because of the promised punishments for the latter, the former is only further increased. Whence all this, in a world that is either itself a God or the well-intentioned work of a God?

Assim, logo que nosso pensamento encontrou palavras, ele já deixa de ser algo íntimo, algo sério no nível mais profundo. Quando ele começa a existir para os outros, para de viver em nós, da mesma maneira que o filho se separa da mãe quando passa a ter sua existência própria.

Where there is much pride or much vanity, there will also be much revengefulness. - On Psychology

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, Lighthouses as the poet said erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers,magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.

there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life

Was die Herde am meisten hasst, ist derjenige, der anders denkt; es ist nicht so sehr die Meinung selbst, sondern die Kühnheit, selbst denken zu wollen.

A]t bottom it is the same with traveling as with reading. How often do we complain that we cannot remember one thousandth part of what we read! In both cases, however, we may console ourselves with the reflection that the things we see and read make an impression on the mind before they are forgotten, and so contribute to its formation and nurture…

On account of its originality, excellence in every field strikes us as so new and so strange, that to recognize it at first glance will require not only understanding, but also education in the same discipline. As a rule, excellence achieves late recognition, all the later as the discipline is loftier, and those who truly enlighten humankind share the fate of the fixed stars, the light from which requires many years before it descends to the horizon.

For as a rule a man must have worth in himself in order to recognise it and believe in it willingly and freely in others.

For if the choice were given to any individual between his own destruction and that of the world, I do not need to say where it would land in the great majority.

Je edler und vollkommener eine Sache ist, desto später und langsamer gelangt sie zur Reife.

All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality of the forms under which the will to live is objectified.

For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none? For whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.

a ingenuidade se mantém como a indumentária de honra do gênio, assim como a nudez é a da beleza.

Truth that has merely been learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thought of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us.

You can do what you will: but at each given moment of your life you can will only one determined thing and by no means anything other than this one.

Again, you may look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence. And, in any case, even though things have gone with you tolerably well, the longer you live the more clearly you will feel that, on the whole, life is a disappointment, nay, a cheat. If

You need only look at the way in which she is formed, to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labor, whether of the mind or of the body. She pays the debt of life not by what she does, but by what she suffers; by the pains of child-bearing and care for the child, and by submission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion.