Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was a German philosopher and essayist. He is one of the most prominent figures in the history of philosophy. He emphasized the primacy of the will over both reason and sensation. He was greatly influenced by Indian philosophical thought, which he held was consistent with Immanuel Kant’s philosophy in every significant respect.
Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy is based on studies of Kant, Plato, and the Hindu Upaniṣads. In his principal work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819; The World as Will and Idea, 1883,) he contended that the will (self-consciousness in man and the unconscious forces of nature) is the only reality and that the material world is but an illusion (“idea” or “representation”) created by the will.
Schopenhauer was one of the first Western thinkers to take Indian philosophical thought seriously. Admiring the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies of forbearance and resignation, he maintained that happiness is achieved only by renouncing the will (as desired.) Asceticism and purity are the obligations of humankind to terminate the evil. Egoism, which expresses itself principally as ‘the will to live,’ must be conquered.
Schopenhauer also published Ü ber den Willen in der Natur (On the Will in Nature, 1836,) on how his philosophy was consistent with the sciences, and Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, 1841.)
Schopenhauer’s philosophy influenced many intellectuals, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Richard Wagner, Leo Tolstoy, and Jorge Luis Borges.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Arthur Schopenhauer
A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Anticipation, Expectation
If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Opinions
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Face, Faces
I observed once to Goethe … that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, “Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself”.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Friendship
A truth that is merely acquired from others only clings to us as a limb added to the body, or as a false tooth, or a wax nose. A truth we have acquired by our our own mental exertions, is like our natural limbs, which really belong to us.—This is exactly the difference between an original thinker and the mere learned man.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Truth
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
Topics: Death, Suicide
Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Willpower, Will Power, Will
Human existence must be a kind of error…it may be said of it, ‘it is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens’.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Depression
To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Opposition
Gaiety alone, as it were, is the hard cash of happiness; everything else is just a promissory note.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Happiness, Cheerfulness
The word of man is the most durable of all material.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Language
If there is anything in the world that can really be called a mans property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
There is no vice, of which a man can be guilty, no meanness, no shabbiness, no unkindness, which excited so much indignation among his contemporaries, friends and neighbors, as his success. This is the one unpardonable crime, which reason cannot defend, nor [can] humility mitigate.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Success, Friend, Vice, Kindness, Reason, Humility, Kind
Pride … is the direct appreciation of oneself.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Confidence, Assurance
Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Control
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Boredom
Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Success, Money, Happiness
Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the conscience.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Revenge, Vengeance
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Defects, Greed, Money
There is one respect in which brutes show real wisdom when compared with us-I mean their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Animals
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Defects, Stupidity
The present is the only reality and the only certainty.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Certainty
Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Life
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Manners, Politeness
The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Desire, Desires
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Age
It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Character
If people insist that honor is dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being are as nothing compared with other people’s opinions. Of course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we are to make any progress in the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Honor
The mother of the useful art, is necessity; that of the fine arts, is luxury.—the former have intellect for their father; the latter, genius, which itself is kind of luxury.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Art
In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Action
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Joy, Love
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Suffering
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Ideas
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Faces, Face
Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral, and subject to chance.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Happiness, Confidence, Self-reliance
To the man who studies to gain a thorough insight into science, books and study are merely the steps of the ladder by which he climbs to the summit; as soon as a step has been advanced he leaves it behind.—The majority of mankind, however, who study to fill their memory with facts do not use the steps of the ladder to mount upward, but take them off and lay them on their shoulders in order that they may take them along, delighting in the weight of the burden they are carrying.—They ever remain below because they carry what should carry them.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Study
I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant’s works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Authors & Writing
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Religion
My desire is for wisdom, not for the exercise of the will. The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Will Power, Will, Willpower, Wisdom
Talent is able to achieve what is beyond other people’s capacity to achieve, yet not what is beyond their capacity of apprehension; therefore it at once finds its appreciators. The achievement of genius, on the other hand, transcends not only others’ capacity of achievement, but also their capacity of apprehension; therefore they do not become immediately aware of it. Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target, as far as which others cannot even see.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Talent
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