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Arthur Schopenhauer

42 quotes

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was a German philosopher best known for his work *The World as Will and Representation*. His philosophy, which emphasized the role of human desire and will as the driving force behind suffering, deeply influenced later thinkers including Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein.

“Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Happiness

All Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Death

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Alone

“To live alone is the fate of all great souls.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Alone

“Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Money

“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

Death

“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

Success

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Death

“Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Nature

“The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Truth

“Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Power

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Great

“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

Intelligence

“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

Great

“Hatred is an affair of the heart contempt that of the head.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Anger

“Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Nature

“The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Happiness

“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

Death

“Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another but women are by nature enemies.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Men

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Intelligence

“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

Death