Top 500 Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

102. “To read a book is to hold an entire world in the palm of your hand. That world is unique to you; no two readers can ever inhabit the same world.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

103. “Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

104. “Directly after copulation, the devil’s laughter is heard.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

105. “This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

106. “If life – the craving for which is the very essence of our being – were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

107. “No doubt, when modesty was made a virtue, it was a very advantageous thing for the fools, for everybody is expected to speak of himself as if he were one.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

108. “Astrology furnishes a splendid proof of the contemptible subjectivity of men. It refers the course of celestial bodies to the miserable ego: it establishes a connection between the comets in heaven and squabbles and rascalities on earth.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

110. “Life is a business that does not cover the costs.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

111. “The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

112. “Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

113. “When you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it’s a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

114. “Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

115. “Genius lives only one storey above madness.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

118. “The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

119. “Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

120. “Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

121. “The world is not a factory and animals are not products for our use.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

122. “Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

123. “Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

124. “Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

125. “Every satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire, so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

126. “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

127. “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

128. “The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

129. “There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

130. “Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

131. “A man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something that he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbour with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he is happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

132. “What a person is for himself, what abides with him in his loneliness and isolation, and what no one can give or take away from him, this is obviously more essential for him than everything that he possesses or what he may be in the eyes of others...”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

133. “A word too much always defeats its purpose.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

134. “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.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

136. “Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

137. “Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

138. “Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

139. “Music is the melody whose text is the world.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

140. “We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

141. “It is only when a man is alone that he is really free.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

142. “It is not what things are objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the reverse.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

143. “The beard, being a half-mask, should be forbidden by the police – It is, moreover, as a sexual symbol in the middle of the face, obscene: that is why it pleases women.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

145. “The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

146. “Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

149. “Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

150. “To gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; and even though we are always living in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer