Arthur Schopenhauer quotes

“Rascals are always sociable, more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“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

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“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

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“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

“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

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“The word of man is the most durable of all material.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer