Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

The wise man does not seek pleasure but freedom from care and pain.

Even trees must be shaken by the wind, if they are to thrive.

Of every event in our life we can say only for one moment that it is; for ever after, that it was. Every evening we are poorer by a day. It might, perhaps, make us mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away; if it were not that in the furthest depths of our being we are secretly conscious of our share in the exhaustible spring of eternity, so that we can always hope to find life in it again.

Volere il meno possibile e conoscere il più possibile è stata la massima che ha guidato la mia vita.

On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason is Schopenhauer's doctoral dissertation, which he wrote in 1813

O único modo de desenvolver a superioridade na convivência com os outros é não precisar deles de maneira alguma e fazê-los perceber isso.

In short, a large part of the powers of the human race is taken away from the production of what is necessary, in order to bring what is superfluous and unnecessary within the reach of a few.

The more distinctly a man knows, the more intelligent he is, the more pain he has.

How very learned many a man would be if he knew everything that was in his own books! The consequence of this is that these writers talk in such a loose and vague manner, that the reader puzzles his brains in vain to understand what it is of which they are really thinking. They are thinking of nothing.

El individuo es un vaso harto frágil para contender la aspiración infinita de la voluntad de la especie, concentrada en un objeto determinado.

Mere subtlety may qualify you as a sceptic but not as a philosopher. On the other hand, scepticism is in philosophy what the Opposition is in Parliament; it is just as beneficial, and indeed necessary. It rests everywhere on the fact that philosophy is not capable of producing the kind of evidence mathematics produces.

Fundamentally it is only our own basic thoughts that possess truth and life, for only these do we really understand through and through. The thoughts of another that we have read are crumbs from another's table, the cast-off clothes of an unfamiliar guest.

For to combine the object with its superficial appearance is difficult, when it is not impossible. Indeed that is just the curse of this world of want and need, that everything must serve and slave for these; and therefore it is not so constituted that any noble and sublime effort, like the endeavour after light and truth, can prosper unhindered and exist for its own sake.

Není nic t?žšího než vyjádÃ…â"¢it významnou myÅ¡lenku tak, aby jí každý rozumÄ›l.

Most of our suffering lies in retrospect or anticipation.

cur numeri musici et modi, qui voces sunt, moribus similes sese exhibent? ): Probl. c.

What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', to escape boredom.

To be happy one must be as ignorant as youth, youth thinks that willing and striving are joys - it does not yet discover the unending character of desire and the fruitless of fulfillment, It does not yet see the inevitableness of defeat

Money is human happiness in abstracto; consequently he who is no longer capable of happiness in concreto sets his whole heart on money.

Kdo je pÃ…â"¢ítelem vÅ¡ech, není pÃ…â"¢ítelem nikoho.

Por eso habría que evitar las ilusiones, pues cualquier dolor excesivo que aparece repentinamente no es más que la caída desde semejante punto elevado, o sea, la desaparición de una ilusión que lo ha producido.

Los hombres no significan nada para mí, en ninguna parte.

That which has been exists no more; it exists as little as that which has never been.

The prayer "Lead me not into temptation" means: "Let me not see who I am.