Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

About Arthur Schopenhauer:

Arthur Schopenhauer is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation, in which he characterizes the phenomenal world, and consequently all human action, as the product of a blind, insatiable, and malignant metaphysical will.
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The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

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

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

Arthur Schopenhauer

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Arthur Schopenhauer

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Arthur Schopenhauer

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

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

Arthur Schopenhauer

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

Arthur Schopenhauer

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

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 c...

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

Author Bio

  • NameArthur Schopenhauer
  • DescriptionGerman philosopher
  • BornFebruary 22, 1788
  • DiedSeptember 21, 1860
  • CountryGermany
  • ProfessionUniversity Professor; Philosopher; Writer; Musicologist