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
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Age
It is in trifles, and when he is off his guard, that a man best shows his character.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: One Step at a Time
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Joy, Love
In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life—it will be the solace of my death.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Selfishness, Defects
Fame is something that must be won. Honor is something that must not be lost.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Fame
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Age, Truth
A man of genius can hardly be sociable, for what dialogues could indeed be so intelligent and entertaining as his own monologues?
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Genius
Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Realistic Expectations
Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Greatness
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
Topics: Morning, Fresh, Death, Dying, Time Management
Gaiety alone, as it were, is the hard cash of happiness; everything else is just a promissory note.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Happiness, Cheerfulness
It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Fate
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!
—Arthur Schopenhauer
In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Action
There is not a grain of dust, not an atom that can become nothing, yet man believes that death is the annhilation of his being.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Death
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Stupidity, Defects
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
Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Religion
To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Correction, Reform
With people with only modest ability, modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent, it is hypocrisy.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Love, Humility, Modesty, Talent, People, Hypocrisy
Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Control
Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Bravery
It is a great piece of folly to sacrifice the inner for the outer man.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
The present is the only reality and the only certainty.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Certainty
To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Immortality
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Change
People of Wealth and the so called upper class suffer the most from boredom.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Boredom
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Boredom
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Patriotism
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Solitude
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Faces, Face
The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Time Management
A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Faces, Face
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
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
Topics: Value of a Day, Time Management, Fortune, Change, Luck
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Dreams, Vision, Philosophy, Perspective
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Relationships
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Ideas
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