958 Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

All geniuses are peculiarly inclined to solitude, to which they are driven as much by their difference from others as the inner wealth with which they are quipped, since among humans, among diamonds, only the uncommonly great are suited as solitaires: the ordinary ones must be set in clusters to produce any effect.

The result is that much reading robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and that the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book every time you have a free moment.

If this world were populated with really thinking beings, it would be impossiblefor all kinds of noise to be permitted and given such unlimited scope, eventhe most terrible and purposeless. But if nature had intended man for thinking,she would not have given him ears, or at any rate would have furnished themwith air-tight flaps, as with bats whom for this reason I envy.

Reading is nothing more than a substitute for thought of one’s own. . . A man should read only when his own thoughts stagnate at their source, which will happen often enough even with the best of minds. On the other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring away one’s own original thoughts is sin against the Holy Spirit. It is like running away from Nature to look at a museum of dried plants or gaze at a landscape in copperplate.

Reading is nothing more than a substitute for thought of one’s own. . . A man should read only when his own thoughts stagnate at their source, which will happen often enough even with the best of minds. On the other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring away one’s own original thoughts is sin against the Holy Spirit. It is like running away from Nature to look at a museum of dried plants or gaze at a landscape in copperplate. - Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Thinking for Oneself" (1851)

For boundless compassion for all living beings is the firmest and most certain guarantee of moral good conduct and requires no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will certainly injure no one, infringe on no one, do no one harm, rather, forbear everyone, forgive everyone, help everyone as much as he can, and all his actions will carry the imprint of justice and loving kindness.

The character of the human being is empirical. Only through experience can one become acquainted with it, not merely with that of others, but also with one’s own.

Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.

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.