Arthur Schopenhauer

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Reading is thinking with someone else’s head instead of ones own.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Today it is bad, and day by day it will get worse―until at last the worst of all arrives.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Therefore the man of genius requires imagination, in order to see in things not what nature has actually formed, but what she endeavoured to form, yet did not bring about, because of the conflict of her forms with one another

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Ordinary people merely think how they shall ‘spend’ their time; a man of talent tries to ‘use’ it.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

We seldom think of what we have, but always of what we lack.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

—Arthur Schopenhauer