Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

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

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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Libraries, Knowledge, Disorder

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: Defects, Selfishness

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

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

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Age

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Dying, Birth, Death, Nature

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, Death, Time Management, Fresh, Dying

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Defects, Money, Greed

It is a great piece of folly to sacrifice the inner for the outer man.
Arthur Schopenhauer

The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that moral character is unalterable: a single bad action implies that future actions of the same kind will, under similar circumstances, also be bad.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Honor

Faith is like love: it cannot be forced.—As trying to force love begets hatred, so trying to compel religious belief leads to unbelief.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Faith

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: Confidence, Self-reliance, Happiness

Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Pregnancy

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Education

He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Joy, Love

The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity, for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Courage

Compassion is the basis of all morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Service, One liners, Kindness, Morality, Compassion

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

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Fate

Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.
Arthur Schopenhauer

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Curiosity

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Age

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Stupidity, Defects

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Change

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

Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Greatness

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

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

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Topics: Last Words, Death

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

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