958 Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.

If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.

The tallest oak tree once was an acorn that any pig could have swallowed.

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control

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

[Malebranche] teaches that we see all things in God himself. This is certainly equivalent to explaining something unknown by something even more unknown. Moreover, according to him, we see not only all things in God, but God is also the sole activity therein, so that physical causes are so only apparently; they are merely occasional causes. ( Recherches de la vérité , Livre VI, seconde partie, chap. 3.) And so here we have essentially the pantheism of Spinoza who appears to have learned more from Malebranche than from Descartes.

Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.

For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.

To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.