Arthur Schopenhauer

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet’s tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Sometimes I speak to men and women just as a little girl speaks to her doll. She knows, of course, that the doll does not understand her, but she creates for herself the joy of communication through a pleasant and conscious self-deception.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

He who can see truly in the midst of general infatuation is like a man whose watch keeps good time, when all clocks in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows the right time; what use is that to him?

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don’t believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favors.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Marrying means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Night gives a black look to everything, whatever it may be.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don’t believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

That when you’re buying books, you’re optimistically thinking you’re buying the time to read them.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Why is it that, in spite of all the mirrors in the world, no one really knows what he looks like?

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.

—Arthur Schopenhauer