Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

If God made this world, then i would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart.

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror.

Any book which is at all important should be re-read immediately.

Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the business man.

The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity, for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.

The happiness of any given life is to be measured not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering, from positive evil.

I observed once to Goethe ... that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself."

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.

Fame is something which must be won; honour is something which must not be lost.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessence of life, and to a certain extent sacred.

Time is that in which all things pass away.

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.

Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing up the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?

Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral, and subject to chance.

The greatest intellectual capacities are only found in connection with a vehement and passionate will.

The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.