Top 500 Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “It will generally be found that as soon the terrors of live reach the point where they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

302. “Think what you’re doing! When you say I, I, I want to exist, it is not you alone that says this. Everything says it, absolutely everything that has the faintest trace of consciousness. It follows, then, that this desire of yours is just the part of you that is not individual – the part that is common to all things without distinction.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

303. “Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

304. “The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

305. “Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

306. “There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

307. “The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

308. “Want and boredom are indeed the twin poles of human life.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

309. “Why is it that, in spite of all the mirrors in the world, no one really knows what he looks like?”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

310. “There is not a grain of dust, not an atom that can become nothing, yet man believes that death is the annhilation of his being.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

311. “Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

312. “The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Featured in: Not Giving Up Quotes

313. “That I could clamber to the frozen moon. And draw the ladder after me.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

314. “Indeed, intolerance is essential only to monotheism; an only God is by nature a jealous God who will not allow another to live. On the other hand, polytheistic gods are naturally tolerant, they live and let live.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

315. “The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

316. “In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

317. “Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

318. “The man who sees two or three generations is like one who sits in the conjuror’s booth at a fair, and sees the same tricks two or three times. They are meant to be seen only once.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

319. “Sometimes I speak to men and women just as a little girl speaks to her doll. She knows, of course, that the doll does not understand her, but she creates for herself the joy of communication through a pleasant and conscious self-deception.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

320. “Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

321. “You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

322. “All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

323. “I am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again by the stupidity, of my dog; and I have similar experiences with mankind.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

324. “If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

325. “It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

326. “To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

327. “A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles, for then he is off his guard.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

328. “Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety valve is to the steam engine.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

329. “Unrest is the mark of existence.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

330. “How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

331. “Honour is external conscience, and conscience is inward honour.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

332. “You should deal sternly and despotically with your memory, so that it does not unlearn obedience; if, for example, you cannot call something to mind, a line of poetry or a word perhaps, you should not go and look it up in a book, but periodically plague your memory with it for weeks on end until your memory has done its duty. For the longer you have had to rack your brains for something the more firmly will it stay once you have got it.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

333. “For it is a matter of daily observation that people take the greatest pleasure in that which satisfies their vanity; and vanity cannot be satisfied without comparison with others.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

334. “Whatever torch we kindle, and whatever space it may illuminate, our horizon will always remain encircled by the depth of night.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

335. “The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that moral character is unalterable: a single bad action implies that future actions of the same kind will, under similar circumstances, also be bad.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

336. “We learn by experience that happiness and pleasure are a fata morgana, which, visible from afar, vanish as we approach; that, on the other hand, suffering and pain are a reality, which makes its presence felt without any intermediary, and for its effect, stands in no need of illusion or the play of false hope.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

337. “In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

338. “To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the whole inner nature of the world, and thus to deposit it as a reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty of reason, this and nothing else is philosophy.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

339. “The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

340. “This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

341. “It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

343. “All religions promise a reward beyond this life in eternity for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head, of the understanding.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

344. “For what is our civilised world but a big masquerade? where you meet knights, priests, soldiers, men of learning, barristers, clergymen, philosophers, and I don’t know what all! But they are not what they pretend to be; they are only masks, and, as a rule, behind the masks you will find moneymakers.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

345. “When a new truth enters the world, the first stage of reaction to it is ridicule, the second stage is violent opposition, and in the third stage, that truth comes to be regarded as self-evident.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

346. “Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

347. “Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect; the second have a much longer duration; but the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

348. “It is really most absurd to wish to turn this scene of misery into a pleasure spot and set ourselves the goal of achieving pleasures and joys instead of freedom from pain, as so many do. Those who, with too gloomy a gaze, regard this world as a kind of hell and, accordingly, are only concerned with procuring a fireproof room in it, are much less mistaken. The fool runs after the pleasures of life and sees himself cheated; the sage avoids evils.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

349. “In truth the most striking figure for the relation of the two is that of the strong blind man carrying the sighted lame man on his shoulders.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Featured in: Strong Quotes

350. “Since everything which exists or happens for a man exists only in his consciousness and happens for it alone, the most essential thing for a man is the constitution of this consciousness, which is in most cases far more important than the circumstances which go to form its contents.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer