Top 500 Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Newspapers are the second hand of history.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

252. “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

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

256. “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

257. “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

258. “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

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

260. “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

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

261. “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

262. “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

263. “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

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

265. “The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

266. “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

267. “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

268. “God, who in the beginning was the creator, appears in the end as revenger and rewarder. Deference to such a God admittedly can produce virtuous actions; however, because fear of punishment or hope for reward are their motive, these actions will not be purely moral; on the contrary, the inner essence of such virtue will amount to prudent and carefully calculating egoism.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

269. “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

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

271. “The greatest wisdom consists in enjoying the present and making this enjoyment the goal of life, because the present is all that is real and everything else merely imaginary. But you could just as well call this mode of life the greatest folly: for that which in a moment ceases to exist, which vanishes as completely as a dream, cannot be worth any serious effort.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

273. “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

274. “Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

275. “Thus, flowers cannot be preserved, but their ethereal oil, their essence, with the same smell and the same virtues, can. The conduct that has had correct concepts for its guidance will, in the result, coincide with the reality intended.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

276. “Caci avutia este ca apa sarata: cu cat bei cu atat ti-e mai este. La fel este si gloria.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

277. “People’s envy shows how unhappy they feel; their constant attention to the doings of others how bored they are.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

278. “Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

279. “On account of its originality, excellence in every field strikes us as so new and so strange, that to recognize it at first glance will require not only understanding, but also education in the same discipline. As a rule, excellence achieves late recognition, all the later as the discipline is loftier, and those who truly enlighten humankind share the fate of the fixed stars, the light from which requires many years before it descends to the horizon.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

280. “Any book, which is at all important, should be reread immediately.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Featured in: Book Quotes

281. “A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

282. “Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people; intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

283. “National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Featured in: Country Quotes

284. “Therefore if egoism has a firm hold of a man and masters him, whether it be in the form of joy, or triumph, or lust, or hope, or frantic grief, or annoyance, or anger, or fear, or suspicion, or passion of any kind – he is in the devil’s clutches and how he got into them does not matter. What is needful is that he should make haste to get out of them; and here, again, it does not matter how.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

285. “A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

286. “You can never read bad literature too little, nor good literature too much.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

287. “To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

288. “In the first place, no man is happy but strives his whole life long after a supposed happiness which he seldom attains, and even if he does it is only to be disappointed with it.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

289. “The highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

290. “The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and more slowly does it mature.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

291. “Virtue cannot be taught, no more than genius; indeed, concepts are as unfruitful for it as for art and of use only as tools.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

292. “True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

293. “Consideration of the kind, touched on above, might, indeed, lead us to embrace the belief that the greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life; because that is the only reality, all else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand, such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly: for that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth a serious effort.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

294. “Fundamental disposition towards others, assuming the character either of Envy or of Sympathy, is the point at which the moral virtues and vices of mankind first diverge.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

295. “Genius is the ability to leave entirely out of sight our own interest, our willing, and our aims, and consequently to discard entirely our own personality for a time, in order to remain pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world; and this not merely for moments, but with the necessary continuity and conscious thought to enable us to repeat by deliberate art what has been apprehended and “what in wavering apparition gleams fix in its place with thoughts that stand for ever!”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

296. “For the purpose of acquiring gain, everything else is pushed aside or thrown overboard, for example, as is philosophy by the professors of philosophy.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

297. “Das Ganze der Erfahrung gleicht einer Geheimschrift und die Philosophie der Entzifferung derselben. The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy is like the deciphering of it.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

298. “A man may begin by following the craving of desire, until he comes to see how hollow and unreal a thing is life, how deceitful are its pleasures, what horrible aspects it possesses; and this it is that makes people hermits, penitents, Magdalenes.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

299. “There is no happiness on earth to compare with that which a beautiful and fruitful mind finds in a propitious hour within itself.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

300. “It is just as little necessary for the saint to be a philosopher as for the philosopher to be a saint; just as it is not necessary for a perfectly beautiful person to be a great sculptor, or for a sculptor to be himself a beautiful person. In general it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer