Top 500 Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes (2023 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “For where did Dante take the material of his hell but from our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

402. “It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

403. “Not to go to the theater is like making one’s toilet without a mirror.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

404. “Boredom is an evil that is not to be estimated lightly. It can come in the end to real despair. The public authority takes precautions against it everywhere, as against other universal calamities.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

405. “It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

406. “Something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

407. “Unrest is the mark of existence.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

408. “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

409. “Beauty is an open letter of recommendation that wins hearts for us in advance.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

410. “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

411. “Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

412. “Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

413. “Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

414. “Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

415. “So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

416. “For our improvement we need a mirror.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

417. “If he has a soul above the common, or if he is a man of genius, he will occasionally feel like some noble prisoner of state, condemned to work in the galleys with common criminals; and he will follow his example and try to isolate himself.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

418. “There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

419. “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

420. “When a man has reached a condition in which he believes that a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and that what he wishes to happen never will be, this is really the state called desperation.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

421. “For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shine only when it is dark.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

422. “People of Wealth and the so called upper class suffer the most from boredom.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

423. “We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

424. “Everything that happens, happens of necessity.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

425. “If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it. But if you do that you will produce nothing great. If you have something great in view you must address yourself to posterity: only then, to be sure, you will probably remain unknown to your contemporaries; you will be like a man compelled to spend his life on a desert island and there toiling to erect a memorial so that future seafarers shall know he once existed.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

426. “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

427. “If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

428. “The result is that much reading robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and that the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book every time you have a free moment. The practice of doing this is the reason erudition makes most men duller and sillier than they are by nature and robs their writings of all effectiveness: they are in Pope’s words: For ever reading, never to be read.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

429. “Life is an unpleasant business. I have resolved to spend mine reflecting on it.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

430. “Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others and denies nothing to itself.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

431. “Behind the cross stands the devil.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

432. “Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

433. “We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

434. “I love looking at famous people. Because of the way they look. Because of the way photography makes them look famous.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

435. “Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

436. “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

437. “What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

438. “In general, however, grand opera, by more and more deadening our musical receptivity through its three-hours duration and at the same time putting our patience to the test through the snail’s pace of what is usually a very trite action, is in itself intrinsically and essentially boring; which failing can be overcome only by the excessive excellence of an individual achievement: that is why in this genre only the masterpieces are enjoyable and everything mediocre is unendurable.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

439. “One man is more concerned with the impression he makes on the rest of mankind, another with the impression the rest of mankind makes on him.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

440. “A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

441. “A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

442. “There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

443. “The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father the former has intellect; the latter genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

444. “We take no pleasure in existence except when we are striving after something.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

445. “Even trees must be shaken by the wind, if they are to thrive.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

446. “A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

447. “All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality of the forms under which the will to live is objectified.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

448. “In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

449. “Every moment of our life belongs to the present only for a moment; then it belongs for ever to the past.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

450. “Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer