Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

One should use common words to say uncommon things

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful.

The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

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

No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. [...] The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author's thoughts; and the value of these will lie either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form which his thoughts take, in other words, what it is that he has thought about it.

It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.

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

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude

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

Truth is most beautiful undraped.

Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure

Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.

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

Compassion is the basis of all morality

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. They belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of this earth.