Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Arthur Schopenhauer

1788 – 1860 CE

Though mainly unnoticed during his life, after he died Schopenhauer’s work had a huge impact on psychology, literature, art, philosophy, music and science. He was one of the first Western thinkers to affirm major aspects of Eastern philosophy. He called himself a Buddhist and compared his philosophy to basic Buddhist teachings. Einstein extolled Schopenhauer’s life-long influence and he was also respected and emulated by people like Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Freud, Jung, Joseph Campbell and Thomas Mann. His influence continues today into fields like modern evolutionary psychology.

Eras

Sources

Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Wisdom of Life

Unlisted Sources

Aphorisms

Essays

Essays and Aphorisms

On the Basis of Morality

On the Basis of Morality, 1840

Personality, or What a Man Is

The American Freeman

The Object of Experience and Science

The World as Will and Idea (1819)

The World as Will and Idea (1844)

The World as Will and Idea, 1819

Works of Schopenhauer

Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer (125 quotes)

“the difficulty is… that something can be both true and untrue at the same time… mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.”

Chapters: 22. Heaven's Door

Themes: Paradox

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“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”

Chapters: 42. Children of the Way

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“A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.”

Chapters: 10. The Power of Goodness

Themes: Desire Freedom

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“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

Chapters: 41. Distilled Life

Themes: Truth

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“Compassion is the basis of morality.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“The cheapest sort of pride is national pride... it argues that he has no qualities of his own... Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Chapters: 72. Helpful Fear
78. Water

Themes: Nationalism

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“Every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch… He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorized it.”

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over... If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.”

Chapters: 48. Unlearning

Themes: Contemplation

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“Genius always rises like a palm-tree above the soil in which it is rooted.”

Chapters: 61. Lying Low

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“Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.”

Chapters: 13. Honor and Disgrace

Themes: Hope Confusion

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“If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am its prisoner.”

Chapters: 15. Inscrutability

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“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”

Chapters: 81. Journey Without Goal

Themes: Happiness

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“Life is a constant process of dying.”

Chapters: 52. Cultivating the Changeless

Themes: Death and Dying

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“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.”

Chapters: 71. Sick of Sickness

Themes: Reason Religion

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

Chapters: 73. Heaven’s Net

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“The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech... As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere.”

Chapters: 56. One with the Dust

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“The art of not reading… remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”

Chapters: 2. The Wordless Teachings

Themes: Books

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“The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it.”

Chapters: 56. One with the Dust

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“The charlatan… is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.”

Chapters: 24. Unnecessary Baggage

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“The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

Themes: Letting Go

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“there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?”

Chapters: 38. Fruit Over Flowers

Themes: Opinion

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“Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

Themes: Creativity Reason

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“vulgar minds who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.”

Chapters: 71. Sick of Sickness

Themes: Law and Order

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“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

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“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process… we gradually lose the capacity for thinking... This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid.”

Chapters: 48. Unlearning

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“The ordinary man places his life’s happiness in things external to him – in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society and the like so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“My philosophy has never brought me a sixpence; but it has spared me many an expense.”

from Wisdom of Life

Themes: Philosophy

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“Riches are like sea water: the more you drink, the thirstier you become; and the same is true of fame.”

from Wisdom of Life

Chapters: 44. Fame and Fortune

Themes: Fame Wealth

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“Wealth is nowhere more at home than in the merchant class because merchants look upon money only as a means of further gain, just as a workman regards his tools so they try to preserve and increase it by using it.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“What everyone most aims at in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove them inferior to himself; and how much more is this the case in politics.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“Respect is paid to age because old people have necessarily shown in the course of their lives whether or not they have been able to maintain their integrity. Young people have not yet been tested.”

from Wisdom of Life

Themes: Old Age

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“When we come to see how superficial and futile are most people’s thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their sentiments, how perverse their opinions; we will understand that to lay great value upon what other people say is to pay them too much honor.”

from Wisdom of Life

Themes: Conformity

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“Wife and children I have not considered among a man's possessions: he is rather in their possession.”

from Wisdom of Life

Themes: Family

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“If you stroke a cat, it will purr; if you praise a man, a sweet expression of delight will appear on his face even though the praise is a palpable lie.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“The most essential factor in happiness is health... the greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness”

from Wisdom of Life

Themes: Health

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“Deeply rooted in human nature is the mistaken belief that the ultimate goal for all our effort is gaining greater respect from other people… set limits on this great weakness and susceptibility to public opinion.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“To greatly increase your happiness, just realize the simple truth that the value and the meaningfulness of our lives is within and not based on external factors.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“Too much reading robs the mind of all elasticity... the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book (smart phone or computer) every time you have a free moment.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“As the biggest library in disorder is not as useful as a small, well organized one; a vast accumulation of knowledge is of far less value than a much smaller amount thought through and compared to personal experience and other knowledge.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“It is only our own basic thoughts that possess truth and life… other people’s thoughts are like crumbs form another’s table, the cast-off clothes of an unfamiliar guest.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Pluralism Truth

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“The human need for socialization drives human porcupines together [‘Schopenhauer’s or The Porcupine’s dilemma’] only to be mutually repelled by the many irritating qualities of the others (‘familiarity breeds contempt’). Codes of politeness and manners create a tolerable but unsatisfying balance between social warmth and irritation so the more independent and self-sufficient prefer more solitude.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“You can only know what you have thought about and thinking has to be kindled like a fire. Reading can spark this kind of thinking when it forcibly imposes ideas on the mind foreign to it’s mood, beliefs, and prejudices.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Education

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“A truth won by thinking for ourselves is like a natural limb: it alone really belongs to us. This is the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“While the intellectual horizon of the normal man is wider than that of the animal—one continual present with no consciousness of past or future—it is not so immeasurably wide as generally supposed.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Mind

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“Between the ethics of the Greeks and those of the Hindus, there exists a glaring antithesis—the Greek goal to lead a happy life, the Hindu to liberate and redeem from life altogether.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“Between the spirit of Graeco-Roman paganism and the spirit of Christianity, the real antithesis is the pagan affirmation of the will to life opposed to the Christian denial of the will to life with a search for a redemption from the world.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Christianity

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“Religions are the children of ignorance and do not long survive their mother... Mankind is growing out of religion as out of its childhood clothes.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“Christianity is dead and no longer exercises much influence. When it did, civilization was at a very point in Christian countries.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Christianity

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“All religion is antagonistic to culture... genuine morality is dependent on no religion”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Integrity Culture

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“Time ceases to persecute only those it has delivered over to boredom.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Time Carpe diem

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“Nevertheless, everyone desires to achieve old age, that is to say a condition in which one can say, 'Today it is bad, and day by day it will get worse—until at last the worst arrives.'”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Old Age

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“Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“Sexual desire—especially when concentrated with fixated infatuation on a particular person—becomes the quintessence of this world's delusion because it promises so excessively much and delivers so miserably little.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Pleasure Sex

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“The more active the imagination, the fewer perceptions from outside transmitted to us by the senses. Long periods of silence and solitude nurture it, journeys, the bustle of life, and high noons of stimulation chase it far away.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“Accustom yourself to regarding the world as a place of suffering, a sort of penal colony and expect the calamities, torments, and miseries of life as normal... this makes us see other people in their true light and reminds us of what is most important: tolerance, patience charity”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“History is the national conscience of the human race... only by virtue of it does the human race come to be whole, come to be a humanity This is the true value of history.”

from The World as Will and Idea, 1819

Themes: History

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“Happy marriages are well known to be rare, just because it lies in the nature of marriage that its chief end is not the present but the coming generation.”

from The World as Will and Idea, 1819

Themes: Marriage

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“To desire immortality is to desire the perpetuation of a great mistake.”

from The World as Will and Idea, 1819

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“The relation of the sexes is really the invisible and central point of all action and conduct... the cause of war and the end of peace; the basis of what is serious, the key to all illusions, and the meaning of all mysterious hints.”

from The World as Will and Idea, 1819

Themes: Sex Love

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“Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the center of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the sure point at which it can remain at rest.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Middle Way

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The Art of Worldly Wisdom is a book made for constant use, a companion for life... to read it only once is obviously not enough.”

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“If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked.”

Themes: Deception Lies

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“Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.”

from Aphorisms

Themes: Money

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“Shame on such a morality that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun.”

from On the Basis of Morality

Themes: Inscrutable

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“Profound reader of the human heart and undoubtedly the greatest moralist of modern times; Rousseau drew his wisdom not from books, but from life, and intended his philosophy not for the professorial elite, but for humanity. Foster-child of nature and enemy of all prejudice, he could moralize without tediousness, because he hit with the truth and stirred the heart.”

from On the Basis of Morality, 1840

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“There is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart and Schleiermacher taken together.”

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“There is no absurdity so palpable that one could not fix it firmly in the head of every man on earth provided one began to imprint it before his sixth year”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“Simplicity is the seal of truth... naked truth must be so simple and intelligible that it an be imparted to everyone it its true shape—without disguising it as religion.”

from Essays and Aphorisms

Themes: Simplicity

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“the reason man's life is more full of suffering than the animal's is his greater capacity for knowledge... at each stage of animal life there is a corresponding increase in pain... the will is the string, its frustration the vibration of the string, knowledge the sounding -board, and pain the sound.”

from Essays and Aphorisms

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“by nature and from the first, it is not justice that rules on earth but force... Justice is in itself powerless. To draw this over to the side of justice, so that by means of force justice rules—that is the problem of statecraft.”

from Essays and Aphorisms

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“If you want Utopian plans, I would say: the only solution to the problem is the despotism of the wise and noble members of a genine aristocracy, a genuine nobility, achieved by mating the most magnanimous men with the cleverest and most gifted women. This proposal constitutes My Utopia and my Platonic Republic.”

from Essays and Aphorisms

Themes: Shambhala

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“Animals learn death first at the moment of death... man approaches death with the knowledge it is closer every hour... It is for this reason chiefly that we have philosophy and religion... Death is the true inspiring genius, the muse of philosophy”

from The World as Will and Idea (1819)

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“In its explanation of the origin of the world, Judaism is inferior to any other form of religious doctrine professed by a civilized nation, it is the only one which presents no trace whatever of any belief in the immortality of the soul.”

from The World as Will and Idea (1819)

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“The chief source of the serious evils which affect man is man himself: homo homini lupus.”

from The World as Will and Idea (1819)

Themes: Evil

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“Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.”

Themes: Complaint Hate

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“Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the business man.”

Themes: Business

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“The more clearly you become conscious of the frailty, vanity, and dream-like quality of all things, the more clearly will you also become conscious of the eternity of your own inner being”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Immortality Dream

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“If justice ruled on earth it would be sufficient to have built one's house: it would require not further protection than this manifest right of possession. But because injustice is the order of the day, whoever bult the house must also be in a position to protect it”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Control Justice

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“the state is essentially no more than an institution for the protection of the whole against attacks from without and the protection of its individual members from attacks by one another... the necessity for the state ultimately depends on the acknowledged injustice of the human race: without this no one would ever have thought of the state since no one would have needed to fear any encroachment”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Government

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“Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms of—one might almost say two words for—the same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Slavery Poverty

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“the mind must—if it is really to philosophize—also be truly disengaged: it must prosecute no particular goal or aim, and thus be free from the enticement of will”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“to attain a clear consciousness, a main requirement is to comprehend anything that "goes without saying" as a problem”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Openness

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“If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age, you must keep in step with it. But if you do that, you will never produce anything great. For that, you must focus on posterity. Be like a man who spends his life on a desert island working to erect a memorial so that future seafarers will know he once existed.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: Crazy Wisdom

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“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

Themes: True Self

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“an age which for 20 years has applauded a Hegel—that intellectual Caliban—as the greatest of the philosophers, so loudly that it echoes through the whole of Europe... it's applause is prostituted, and its censure has no significance”

from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

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“secretly conscious in the profoundest depths of our being that we share in the inexhaustible well of eternity, out of which we can for ever draw new life and renewed time.”

from Essays and Aphorisms

Themes: Basic Goodness

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“Our existence has no foundation on which to rest except the transient present. Thus its form is essentially unceasing motion, without any possibility of that repose which we continually strive after... existence is typified by unrest.”

from Essays and Aphorisms

Themes: Change

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“the ideality of time together with that of space is the key to all true metaphysics because it makes room for a quite different order of things than that of nature. This is why Kant is so great.”

from Essays and Aphorisms

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“Everything that comes about because of an idea, the intellect, is mere bungling compared with that which comes directly from will, the life force”

from Essays and Aphorisms

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“Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value... the most insignificant present has over the most significant past the advantage of actuality... the former bears to the latter the relation of something to nothing.”

from Essays and Aphorisms

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“If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it. But if you do that you will produce nothing great. If you have something great in view, you must address yourself to posterity.”

from Essays and Aphorisms

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“That the world has no ethical significance but only a physical one is the greatest and most pernicious of errors, the fundamental error, the intrinsically perverse view... and despite all the religions which all assert the opposite, this fundamental error never quite dies out but raises its head again and again”

from Essays and Aphorisms

Themes: Mistakes

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“Virtues are qualities of will... What distinguishes a moral virtue from a moral vice is whether the basic feeling towards others behind it is one of envy or one of pity”

from Essays and Aphorisms

Themes: Virtue

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“no land is so well off as that which requires few imports, or not at all, so the happiest man is one who has enough of his own inner wealth, and requires little or nothing from outside... No man ought to expect much from others, or, in general from the external world... in the end every one stands alone”

from Personality, or What a Man Is

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“The more a man finds his sources of pleasure in himself, the happier he will be.”

from Personality, or What a Man Is

Themes: Pleasure

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“It is quite a piece of folly to sacrifice the inner for the outer man, to give the whole or the greater part of one's quiet, leisure, and independence for splendor, rank, pomp, title and honor This is what Goethe did. My good luck drew me quite in the other direction.”

from Personality, or What a Man Is

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“They try to stimulate their will by passionate excitement, such as games of chance for high stakes—undoubtedly a most degrading form of vice.”

from Personality, or What a Man Is

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“Life and dreams are leaves of the same book... there is no distinct difference in their nature, and we are forced to concede to the poets that life is a long dram.”

from The Object of Experience and Science

Themes: Dream

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“Working then in this spirit, and always seeing the false and bad in universal acceptance, yea bombast and charlatanism in the highest honor, I have long renounced the approbation of my contemporaries.”

Themes: Anonymity

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“While philosophy has long been obliged to serve entirely as a means to public ends on the one side and private ends on the other, I have pursued the course of my thought, undisturbed by them”

from The World as Will and Idea (1819)

Themes: Wu Wei

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“the beginning presupposes the end almost as much as the end presupposes the beginning”

from The World as Will and Idea (1819)

Themes: Karma

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“The life of the mind is not only a protection against boredom; it also wards of the pernicious effects of boredom; it keeps us from bad company, from the many dangers, misfortunes, losses and extravagances which the man who places his happiness entirely n the objective world is sure to encounter.”

from Essays

Themes: Culture

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“The wealth of the soul is the only true wealth, for with all other riches comes a bane even greater than they.”

from Essays

Themes: Wealth

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“The ordinary man places his life's happiness in things external to him—in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the like... his center of gravity is not in himself and when he loses any of these external things, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.”

from Essays

Themes: Projection

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“The man nature has endowed with intellectual wealth is the happiest. Solitude is welcome, leisure is the highest good, and everything else is unnecessary, even burdensome. What external promptings he wants come from the works of nature, and from contemplation of human affairs and the achievements of the great of all ages and countries.”

from Essays

Themes: Less is More

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“Philistines, people who are always seriously occupied with realities which are no realities, live without mental needs or intellectual pleasure and think of oysters and champagne as the height of existence. If the luxuries of life are heaped upon them, they will inevitably be bored and seek out remedies like balls, the theater, parties, cards, gambling, horses, women, drinking, traveling and will create a dull, dry kind of life similar to animals.”

from Essays

Themes: Entertainment

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“Epicurus divides the needs of mankind into three classes and the division made by this great professor of happiness is a true and a fine one.”

from Essays

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“The great affliction of all philistines is that they have no interest in ideas and that, to escape being bored, they are in constant need of realities But realities are higher unsatisfactory or dangerous; when they lose their interest they become fatiguing.”

from Essays

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“although the absurd, as a rule, predominates, and it seems impossible that the voice of the individual can ever penetrate through the chorus of the befooling and the befooled, there yet remains to the genuine works of every age, a quite peculiar, silent, slow, and powerful influence and, as if by a miracle, we see them rise at last out of the turmoil like a balloon that floats up out of the thick atmosphere of this globe into purer regions”

from The World as Will and Idea (1844)

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“What a man is and has in himself is the only immediate and direct factor in his happiness and welfare.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“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, upon the kind and degree of our general susceptibility.”

from Wisdom of Life

Themes: Projection

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“nothing contributes so little to happiness as riches, or so much as health.”

from Wisdom of Life

Themes: Health

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“one man will laugh at what makes another despair... the stronger the susceptibility to unpleasant impressions, the weaker the susceptibility to pleasant ones, and vice versa.”

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“the happiest destiny on earth is to have the rare gift of a rich individuality”

from Wisdom of Life

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“in solitude, where every one is thrown upon his own resources, what a man has in himself comes to light... a man is sociable just in the degree in which he is intellectually poor and generally vulgar.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try to win on another's money... card playing is so demoralizing, since the whole opject of it is to employ every kind of trick and machination in order to win what belongs to another.”

from Wisdom of Life

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“every man has a horizon of his own, and he will expect as much as he thinks it is possible for him to get.”

from Wisdom of Life

Themes: Greed

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“just as the female ant, after fecundation, loses her wings which are then a danger to the business of breeding; so, after giving birth to one or two children, a woman generally loses here beauty; probably, for similar reasons.”

from Works of Schopenhauer

Themes: Beauty

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“the fundamental fault of the female character is that it has no sense of justice... They are dependent, not upon strength, but upon craft... Therefore a woman who is perfectly truthful and not given to dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility”

from Works of Schopenhauer

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“women live, as a rule, more for the species than for the individual, and it is this which produces that discord in married life which is so frequent, and almost the normal state.”

from Works of Schopenhauer

Themes: Marriage

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“In London alone there are 80,000 prostitutes... filles de joie, whose lives are as destitute of joy as of honor... human sacrifices offered up on the altar of monogamy... the inevitable set-off to the European lady with here arrogance and pretension.”

from Works of Schopenhauer

Themes: Prostitution

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“The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity.”

from Works of Schopenhauer

Themes: Progress

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“With young girls Nature seems to have had in view a striking effect; for a few years she dowers them with a wealth of beauty and is lavish in her gift of charm, at the expense of all the rest of their life”

from Works of Schopenhauer

Themes: Impermanence

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“a man's deeds are merely the constantly repeated expression, somewhat varied in form, of his intelligible character”

from Works of Schopenhauer

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“Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions.”

from The American Freeman

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Quotes about Arthur Schopenhauer (8 quotes)

“Buddha, Moses, Plato, Socrates, Schopenhauer are to me the real sovereigns.”

Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910 CE

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“the great find resulting from my researches was Schopenhauer... [his] rugged pessimism is almost cheerful in its bravery. We wish to believe in life, but with both eyes open: ans Schopenhauer opens both eyes without pity and without fear.”

Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist

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“Schopenhauer is in many ways peculiar among philosophers... a pessimist, not fully academic, as much interested in art as ethics, unusually free from nationalism... His appeal has always been less to professional philosophers than to artistic and literary people in search of a philosophy that they could believe.”

Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970 CE
“20th century Voltaire”
from History of Western Philosophy

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“Schopenhauer, though a pessimist, one who denies God and the world—who affirms morality and plays the flute—is that really a pessimist?”

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900 CE

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“Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundamentals of the universe, to be the first to speak of the suffering of the world which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of the confusion, passion, evil—all those things which the [other philosophers] hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensibility.”

Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist
from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Themes: Confusion

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“Schopenhauer drew a gloomy picture of the impotent human will beating desperately against the rigidly determined laws of the universe... and the consequent desirability of reducing human vulnerability by reducing man himself... that man suffers much because he seeks too much, is foolishly ambitious, and grotesquely overestimates his capacities.”

Isaiah Berlin 1909 – 1997 CE
"the world's greatest talker"
from The Proper Study of Mankind

Themes: Ambition

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“What we like in Schopenhauer is his honesty. How refreshing it is to turn to him from philosophers who dig their heals into the sand at the sight or the mention of evil... Schopenhauer opens both eyes without pity and without fear. Let the truth be spoken mercilessly!”

Will Durant 1885 – 1981 CE
Philosophy apostle and popularizer of history's lessons
from The Works of Schopenhauer

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“Schopenhauer's saying, that 'a man can do as he will, but not will as he will,' has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralyzing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humor, above all, has its due place.”

Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955 CE
from My World-view, 1931​

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