Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
—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
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
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
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
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
What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.
—Søren Kierkegaard
The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.
—Søren Kierkegaard
If a man is full of the Holy Spirit, then there is no room for the world, there is no room for self.
—D. L. Moody
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
—Søren Kierkegaard
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
—Thomas Jefferson
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
—Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men.
—Søren Kierkegaard
The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.
—Thomas Jefferson
A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
All man are the same except for their belief in their own selves, regardless of what others may think of them.
—Miyamoto Musashi
Do not sleep under a roof. Carry no money or food. Go alone to places frightening to the common brand of men. Become a criminal of purpose. Be put in jail, and extricate yourself by your own wisdom.
—Miyamoto Musashi
Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
—Charles Dickens
Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
—Ernest Hemingway
Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.
—Leonardo Da Vinci
By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice.
This is the only education which deserves the name.
—Plato
It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking.
—Julius Caesar
Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
—Oscar Wilde
Man cannot live without joy. That is why one deprived of spiritual joys goes over to carnal pleasures.
—Thomas Aquinas
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau