958 Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.

Every new born being indeed comes fresh and blithe into the new existence, and enjoys it as a free gift: but there is, and can be, nothing freely given. It's fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of a worn out existence which has perished, but which contained the indestructible seed out of which the new existence has arisen: they are one being.

...nothing at all rides on the life or death of the individual.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Rudeness is better than any argument; it totally eclipses intellect.

It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it.

Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. 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. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. 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.

Motives are causes experienced from within.

The eternal being..., as it lives in us, also lives in every animal.