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55e0e33
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When we see that almost everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than to raise themselves in the estimation of others; when we see that not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even knowledge[1] and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellow..
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stupidity
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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e774497
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Genius is the ability to leave entirely out of sight our own interest, our willing, and our aims, and consequently to discard entirely our own personality for a time, in order to remain pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world; and this not merely for moments, but with the necessary continuity and conscious thought to enable us to repeat by deliberate art what has been apprehended and "what in wavering apparition gleams fix in its p..
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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a74157e
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Therefore the man of genius requires imagination, in order to see in things not what nature has actually formed, but what she endeavoured to form, yet did not bring about, because of the conflict of her forms with one another
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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767652f
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All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering.
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suffering
striving
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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4458d06
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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.
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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8b1e81d
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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 to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power.
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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e9f8dc2
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Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.
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ourselves
other-people
opinions
self-worth
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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232fb13
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Any beautiful mind, full of ideas, would always express itself in the most natural, simple and straightforward way, anxious to communicate its thoughts to others (if this is at all possible) and thus relieve the solitude that he must experience in a world such as this: but conversely, intellectual poverty, confusion and wrong-headedness, clothe themselves in the most laboured expressions and obscure turns of phrase in order to conceal petty..
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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39bff38
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A man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something that he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbour with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he is happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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4d495af
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Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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e008b38
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There is one thing that, more than any other, throws people absolutely off their balance -- the thought that you are dependent upon them. This is sure to produce an insolent and domineering manner towards you. There are some people, indeed, who become rude if you enter into any kind of relation with them; for instance, if you have occasion to converse with them frequently upon confidential matters, they soon come to fancy that they can take..
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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7779da6
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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.
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suffering
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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82e7a43
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For the more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people,--the less, indeed, other people can be to him. This is why a high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial. True,
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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a6da02f
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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. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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7f25a52
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Why is it that, in spite of all the mirrors in the world, no one really knows what he looks like?
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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496a244
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What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', i.e. to escape boredom.
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existence
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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05994d1
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The ingenious person will above all strive for freedom from pain and annoyance, for tranquility and leisure, and consequently seek a quiet, modest life, as undisturbed as possible, and accordingly, after some acquaintance with so-called human beings, choose seclusion and, if in possession of a great mind, even solitude. For the more somebody has in himself, the less he needs from the outside and the less others can be to him. Therefore, int..
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solitude
unsociability
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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eed9aab
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That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom; and that boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence.
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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db2337f
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To free a man from error is not to deprive him of anything but to give him something: for the knowledge that a thing is false is a piece of truth. No error is harmless: sooner or later it will bring misfortune to him who harbours it. Therefore deceive no one, but rather confess ignorance of what you do not know, and leave each man to devise his own articles of faith for himself.
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responsibility
social-debt
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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44ee067
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A man who has not enough originality to think out a new title for his book will be much less capable of giving it new contents.
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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e3448e5
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But he will fear least to become nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now, and who consequently no longer takes any share in his individual phenomenon, because in him knowledge has, as it were, burnt up and consumed the will, so that no will, thus no desire for individual existence, remains in him any more.
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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4d25709
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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. [...] The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.
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writing
truth
authorship
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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099a242
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When you consider how great and immediate is the problem of existence, this ambiguous, tormented, fleeting, dream-like existence - so great and so immediate that as soon as you are aware of it, it overshadows and obscures all other problems and aims; and when you then see how men, with a few rare exceptions, have no clear awareness of this problem, indeed seem not to be conscious of it at all, but concern themselves with anything rather tha..
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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ab7d910
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Genius lives only one storey above madness
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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e3c166f
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In savage countries they eat one another, in civilized they deceive one another; and that is what people call the way of the world!
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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032ea38
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Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within. Contrarily, if they are active within, they do not care to be dragged out of themselves; it disturbs and impedes their thoughts in a way that is often most ruinous to them.
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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20b8f10
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However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule, not so hard as it may seem from a long way off, mainly in consequence of the antagonism between the ills of the body and the ills of the mind. If we are in great bodily pain, or the pain lasts a long time, we become indifferent to other troubles; all we think about is to get well. In the same way great mental suffering makes us insensible to bodily pain; we despise it; nay, if it shoul..
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suicide
studies-in-pessimism
schopenhauer
pessimism
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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4ff526a
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In consequence of the inevitably scattered and fragmentary nature of our thinking, which has been mentioned, and of the mixing together of the most heterogeneous representations thus brought about and inherent even in the noblest human mind, we really possess only *half a consciousness*. With this we grope about in the labyrinth of our life and in the obscurity of our investigations; bright moments illuminate our path like flashes of lighti..
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philosophical-anthropology
saelf
schopenhauer
ontology
metaphysics
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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29b7067
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The most perfect and satisfactory knowledge is that of perception but this is limited to the absolutely particular, to the individual. The comprehension of the many and the various into *one* representation is possible only through the *concept*, in other words, by omitting the differences; consequently, the concept is a very imperfect way of representing things. The particular, of course, can also be apprehended immediately as a universal,..
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philosophy
schopenhauer
ontology
metaphysics
intellect
will
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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bfec73e
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Vladimir Kush , Shell Bronze , Lovers Entwined (painting) "Why, then, does the man in love hang with complete abandon on the eyes of his chosen one, and is ready to make every sacrifice for her? Because it is his immortal part that longs for her; it is always the mortal part alone that longs for everything else. That eager and even ardent longing, directed to a particular woman, is therefore an immediate pledge of the indestructibility of t..
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philosophy
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Arthur Schopenhauer |
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c136d06
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Why, then, does the man in love hang with complete abandon on the eyes of his chosen one, and is ready to make every sacrifice for her? Because it is his immortal part that longs for her; it is always the mortal part alone that longs for everything else. That eager and even ardent longing, directed to a particular woman, is therefore an immediate pledge of the indestructibility of the kernel of our true nature...
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philosophy
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Arthur Schopenhauer |