Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

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

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.

To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another but women are by nature enemies.

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.

The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

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

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Hatred is an affair of the heart contempt that of the head.