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Arthur Schopenhauer

Philosopher

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his profound and often pessimistic views on life, human nature, and the will. His philosophy centers around the idea that suffering is an inherent part of existence, and that true contentment comes through transcending desires. The following quotes capture his deep reflections on the nature of reality, the human condition, and the pursuit of wisdom in a world filled with struggle.

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NOT YET RATED▼
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude
Topic: Inspirational
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.
From Parerga and Paralipomena
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
From The Wisdom of Life
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
When, at the end of their lives, most men look back they will find that they have lived throughout ad interim. They will be surprised to see that the very thing they allowed to slip unnapreciated and unenjoyed by was their life. And so a man, having been duped by hope, dances into the arms of death.
Topic: Hope
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Topic: Inspirational
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
From Parerga and Paralipomena
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.
From The Vanity of Existence
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
From Parerga and Paralipomena
Topic: Death
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The life of an individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand.
From On the Suffering of the World
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
From The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.
Topic: Death, Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Topic: Inspirational
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.
From On the Suffering of the World
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure
Topic: Happiness, Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανάτου μελέτη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise.
From The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
Topic: Death
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.
Topic: Happiness
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. They belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of this earth.
From Essays and Aphorisms
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.
From The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy...
From Essays and Aphorisms
Topic: Religion
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.
From The Wisdom of Life
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude
Topic: Inspirational
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.
From Parerga and Paralipomena
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
From The Wisdom of Life
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
When, at the end of their lives, most men look back they will find that they have lived throughout ad interim. They will be surprised to see that the very thing they allowed to slip unnapreciated and unenjoyed by was their life. And so a man, having been duped by hope, dances into the arms of death.
Topic: Hope
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Topic: Inspirational
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
From Parerga and Paralipomena
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.
From The Vanity of Existence
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
From Parerga and Paralipomena
Topic: Death
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The life of an individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand.
From On the Suffering of the World
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
From The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.
Topic: Death, Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Topic: Inspirational
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.
From On the Suffering of the World
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure
Topic: Happiness, Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανάτου μελέτη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise.
From The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
Topic: Death
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.
Topic: Happiness
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. They belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of this earth.
From Essays and Aphorisms
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.
From The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy...
From Essays and Aphorisms
Topic: Religion
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.
From The Wisdom of Life
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude
Topic: Inspirational
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.
From Parerga and Paralipomena
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
From The Wisdom of Life
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
When, at the end of their lives, most men look back they will find that they have lived throughout ad interim. They will be surprised to see that the very thing they allowed to slip unnapreciated and unenjoyed by was their life. And so a man, having been duped by hope, dances into the arms of death.
Topic: Hope
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Topic: Inspirational
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
From Parerga and Paralipomena
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.
From The Vanity of Existence
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
From Parerga and Paralipomena
Topic: Death
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The life of an individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand.
From On the Suffering of the World
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
From The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.
Topic: Death, Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Topic: Inspirational
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.
From On the Suffering of the World
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure
Topic: Happiness, Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανάτου μελέτη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise.
From The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
Topic: Death
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.
Topic: Happiness
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. They belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of this earth.
From Essays and Aphorisms
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.
From The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
Topic: Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy...
From Essays and Aphorisms
Topic: Religion
Arthur Schopenhauer
NOT YET RATED▼
There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.
From The Wisdom of Life
Topic: Philosophical
Arthur Schopenhauer
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