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Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes - Page 15

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Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect; the second have a much longer duration; but the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all

Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect; the second have a much longer duration; but the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Stars, Fall, Light

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Philosophical, Willpower, Minus

Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Pain, Character, Feelings
Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism (illustrated)”, p.7, Full Moon Publications

Every nation criticizes every other one - and they are all correct.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Criticize, Nations
As quoted by Wolfgang Pauli in a letter to Abraham Pais (17 August 1950) published in "The Genius of Science" (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 242,

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Writing, Interesting, Novelists
Arthur Schopenhauer (1904). “The Art of Literature (illustrated)”, p.50, Full Moon Publications

Ist es an und fu? r sich absurd, das Nichtsein fu? r einUbel zu ? halten; da jedes Ubel wie jedes Gut das Dasein zur Voraussetzung hat, ja sogar das Bewusstsein. It is in and by itself absurd to regard non-existence as an evil; for every evil, like every good, presupposes existence, indeed even consciousness.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Evil, Hats, Consciousness
1844 DieWelt alsWille undVorstellung (TheWorld asWill and Representation), vol.2, ch.41 (translated by E F J Payne).

A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Writing, Should, Clear
Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Art of Literature: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.20, 谷月社

Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Errors, Giving, Wish
Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “The World As Will And Idea: 3 vols in 1 [unabridged]”, p.59, Kshetra Books

At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Fate, Drawing, Years
"The World as Will and Representation, Volume II (On the Vanity and Suffering of Life)". Book by Arthur Schopenhauer (1819), as translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp in "The World as Will and Idea" (p. 389), 1886.

All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany , then everything done by man, and even by animal, is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else; hence there is no ethics.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Animal, Men, Evil
Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “The World as Will and Representation”, p.590, Courier Corporation

Consciousness makes the individual careful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, there would be no surety for the preservation of the species. From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of perfection, but rather a limitation; and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Loss, Perfection, Individuality
Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism (illustrated)”, p.32, Full Moon Publications

Means at our disposal should be regarded as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that can occur. We should not regard such wealth as a permission or even an obligation to procure for ourselves the pleasures of the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Mean, Evil, World
"Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life" by Arthur Schopenhauer, translated by E. Payne, Vol. 1, (p. 348), 1974.

To gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; and even though we are always living in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Past, Long, Expectations
Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.226, Simon and Schuster

To become reconciled to a friend with whom you have broken, is a form of weakness; and you pay the penalty of it when he takes the first opportunity of doing precisely the very thing which brought about the breach.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Opportunity, Broken, Weakness
Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Counsels and maxims (illustrated)”, p.55, Full Moon Publications

To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Atheism, World, Language
Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Religion, a Dialogue, Etc: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.26, 谷月社

If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Stupid, Way, Helping
Arthur Schopenhauer, E. F. J. Payne (1966). “The World as Will and Representation”, p.230, Courier Corporation

Knowledge is to certain extent a second existence.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Certain, Existence

Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety valve is to the steam engine.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Safety, Evil, Steam Engines

In the blessings as well as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which it is met.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Gratitude, Blessing, Way
Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “the Wisdom of Life: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.8, 谷月社

The man who sees two or three generations is like one who sits in the conjuror's booth at a fair, and sees the same tricks two or three times. They are meant to be seen only once.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Men, Two, Three

Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters, and musicians.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Art, Ideas, Musician

[T]he appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Men, Addresses, Form

If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are old, after being separated for a life-time, the chief feeling they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much — and then performed so little.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Disappointment, Light, Sight
Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.216, Simon and Schuster

As the strata of the earth preserve in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expositions, which like the former were very lively and made a great commotion in their own age but now stand petrified and stiff in a place where only the literary palaeontologist regards them.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Past, Errors, Age
Arthur Schopenhauer (2004). “On the Suffering of the World”, p.129, Penguin UK

Whoever heard me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me, but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally an entirely different one.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Cat, Thinking, Years
"The World as Will and Representation". Book by Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819.

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