Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

In its death throes, we see religion clinging to morality, whose mother it would like to pretend to be. In vain! – genuine morality is dependent on no religion, although religion sanctions and thereby sustains it.

Il mondo è una mia rappresentazione: - questa è una verità che vale in rapporto a ciascun essere vivente e conoscente, sebbene l'uomo soltanto sia capace d'accoglierla nella riflessa, astratta coscienza: e s'egli veramente fa questo, con ciò è penetrata in lui la meditazione filosofica.

One man is more concerned with the impression which he makes upon the rest of mankind; another, with the impression which the rest of mankind makes upon him. The disposition of the one is subjective; of the other, objective; the one is, in the whole of his existence, more in the nature of an idea which is merely presented; the other, more of the being who presents it.

purse-honora y provecho no caben en un saco.

Hence much reading deprives the mind of all elasticity, as a weight continually pressing upon it does a spring, and the most certain means of never having any original thoughts is to take a book in hand at once, at every spare moment. This practice is the reason why scholarship makes most men more unintelligent and stupid than they are by nature, and deprives their writings of all success; they are, as Pope says— 'For ever reading, never to be read'.

For boundless compassion for all living beings is the firmest and most certain guarantee of moral good conduct and requires no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will certainly injure no one, infringe on no one, do no one harm, rather, forbear everyone, forgive everyone, help everyone as much as he can, and all his actions will carry the imprint of justice and loving kindness.

Compassion is the most likely alleviation of the countless and multifarious sufferings with which our life is beset and which no one completely escapes, and at the same time compassion is the counterbalance to the burning egoism that fills all beings and often develops into malice

En büyük mutluluk, kiÅŸiliktir.

A man can do what he wants but not want what he wants.

Kitap zihnin en saf özü, en mükemmel suretidir.

In order not to judge unfairly one ought also to settle definitely one's expectations from this [our] point of view, and to regard, for example, even learned men, since as a rule they have become so only by the force of outward circumstances, primarily as men whom nature really intended to be tillers of the soil; indeed even professors of philosophy ought to be estimated according to this standard, and then their achievements will be found to come up to all fair expectations.

Il talento coglie un bersaglio che nessuno riesce a colpire. Il genio coglie un bersaglio che nessuno riesce a vedere.

Si poseyera aquello que me falta, sería incapaz de disfrutarlo y me resultaría un estorbo

T]he empirical inscrutableness of all natural things is a proof a posteriori of the ideality and merely phenomenal-actuality of their empirical existence.

O persoan? înzestrat? cu daruri mentale înalte ÅŸi rare, care e obligat? s? accepte o slujb? strict utilitar? este ca o vaz? preÅ£ioas?, decorat? cu cele mai minunate imagini, dar folosit? ca vas de buc?t?rie.

animal and plant are the descending fifth and third of man, the inorganic kingdom being the lower octave. The full truth of this last simile will become clear to us only when, in the next book, we attempt to fathom the deep significance of music. There we shall see how the connected melody, progressing in high, light, and quick notes, is to be regarded in a certain sense as expressing the life and efforts of man, connected by reflection.

Cuando oigo música, mi imaginación juega a menudo con la idea de que la vida de todos los hombres y la mía propia no son más que sueños de un espíritu eterno, buenos o malos sueños, de que cada muerte es un despertar.

In this respect '?????????? would be a fitting title for the will; yet again this title seems to apply to the intellect, in so far as that is the guide and leader, like the footman who walks in front of the stranger. In truth, however, the most striking figure for the relation of the two is that of the strong blind man carrying the sighted lame man on his shoulders.

Avutia este ca apa sarata: cu cat bei cu-atit ti-e mai sete.

Every separation is a foretaste of death while every new meeting a foretaste of life.

El amor es la compensación de la muerte, su correlativo esencial.

In fact, the balance wheel which maintains in motion the watch of metaphysics that never runs down, is the clear knowledge that this world's non-existence is just as possible as its existence. ?from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. In Two Volumes, Volume II, p. 171

On the philosophy of the Asiatics; Asiatic Researches, vol. IV, p. 164: the fundamental tenet of the Vedanta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms

Only through the pure contemplation . . . which becomes absorbed entirely in the object, are the Ideas comprehended; and the nature of genius consists precisely in the pre-eminent ability for such contemplation. . . . (T)his demands a complete forgetting of our own person.