Arthur Schopenhauer

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre 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 true point at which it can remain at rest.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

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.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

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.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

The word of man is the most durable of all material.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

Rascals are always sociable, more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

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 than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

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

Compassion is the basis of morality.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.