Top 500 Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

203. “The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

204. “If a relationship is perfectly natural there will be a complete fusion of the happiness of both of you-owing to fellow-feeling and various other laws which govern our natures, this is, quite simply, the greatest happiness that can exist.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

205. “Health outweighs all other blessings so much that one may really say that a healthy beggar is happier than an ailing king. A quiet and cheerful temperament, happy in the enjoyment of a perfectly sound physique, an intellect clear, lively, penetrating and seeing things as they are, a moderate and gentle will, and therefore a good conscience – these are privileges which no rank or wealth can make up for or replace.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

206. “I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

207. “Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

208. “A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

209. “Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

211. “Where there is no love, a person’s faithfulness to the marriage bond is probably against nature.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

212. “Personal courage is really a very subordinate virtue-a virtue, indeed, in which we are surpassed by the lower animals; or else you would not hear people say, as brave as a lion.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

213. “Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

214. “In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel’s, Herbart’s and Schleiermacher’s complete philosophical works.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

215. “The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

216. “To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

217. “The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

218. “What now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

219. “A man of genius can hardly be sociable, for what dialogues could indeed be so intelligent and entertaining as his own monologues?”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

220. “All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

221. “Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

222. “For what a man is in himself, what accompanies him when he is alone, what no one can give or take away, is obviously more essential to him than everything he has in the way of possessions, or even what he may be in the eyes of the world. An intellectual man in complete solitude has excellent entertainment in his own thoughts and fancies, while no amount of diversity or social pleasure, theatres, excursions and amusements, can ward off boredom from a dullard.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

223. “La vida es una guerra sin tregua, y se muere con las armas en la mano.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

224. “In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

225. “What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

226. “Happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering-from positive evil.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

227. “Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

229. “Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man IS contributes more to his happiness than what he HAS.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

231. “Rudeness is better than any argument; it totally eclipses intellect.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

232. “Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

233. “The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

234. “How shall a man be proud, when his conception is a crime, his birth a penalty, his life a labour, and death a necessity! –.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

235. “The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

236. “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

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

238. “Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man’s energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

239. “Society is in this respect like a fire-the wise man warming himself at a proper distance from it; not coming too close, like the fool, who, on getting scorched, runs away and shivers in solitude, loud in his complaint that the fire burns.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

240. “Therefore it has always been said that music is the language of feeling and of passion, as words are the language of reason.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

241. “Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

242. “A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

243. “Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

244. “Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

245. “Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to dramatic art, for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

246. “Therefore, we do not become conscious of the three greatest blessings of life as such, namely health, youth, and freedom, as long as we possess them, but only after we have lost them; for they too are negations.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

247. “To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

248. “Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

249. “The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is made.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

250. “The cheapest kind of pride, on the other hand, is national pride. For it betrays in those affected by it the lack of individual qualities of which they could be proud, since they would otherwise not grasp at something that they share with so many millions. Rather those who possess significant personal qualities will recognize most clearly the faults of their own nation, since they constantly have them in front of them.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer