958 Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

A human being does at all times only what he wills, and yet does it necessarily. But that rests on the fact that he is what he wills: for out of what he is everything that he does at any time follows necessarily.

You can do what you will: but at each given moment of your life you can will only one determined thing and by no means anything other than this one.

Under presupposition of free will each human action would be an inexplicable miracle - an effect without cause. And if one dares the attempt to make such a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae imaginable to oneself, one will soon become aware that here the understanding quite genuinely comes to a standstill: it has no form for thinking of such a thing.

We, the salt of the earth, should endeavor to follow, by never letting anything disturb us in the pursuit of our intellectual life, however much the storm of the world may invade and agitate our personal environment.

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

Every time a man is begotten and born the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.

just as the mistakes princes make are paid for by whole peoples, so the errors of great minds spread their malign influence over whole generations, even for hundreds of years, growing and proliferating until in the end they degenerate into monstrosities.

Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!

There is nothing to be got in the world anywhere; privation and pain pervade it, and boredom lies in wait at every corner for those who have escaped them. Moreover, wickedness usually reigns, and folly does all the talking. Fate is cruel, and human beings are pathetic.