53 Quotes About Schopenhauer

And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.

Nul ne peut voir par-dessus soi, écrit Schopenhauer pour faire comprendre l'impossibilité d'un échange d'idées entre deux individus d'un niveau intellectuel trop différent.

There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.

Schopenhauer dreamed a different dream: perhaps reason might detach itself, if only for a few moments, from will, so that the will might relax into playing and reason into pure seeing. He dreamed this dream in philosophy, in art, and above all in music. Never before and never since has such moving philosophy been made about music as by Schopenhauer" - Safranski

We are like a man who goes round a castle seeking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the facades. If we can ferret out the ultimate nature of our own minds we shall perhaps have the key to the external world. 

Truth is most beautiful undraped.

Life was indeed cruel; but it was better to glorify the Will than deny it.

What light is to the outer physical world intellect is to the inner world of consciousness. For intellect is related to the will, and thus also to the organism which is nothing other than will regarded objectively, in the approximate same way as light is to a combustible body and the oxygen in combination with which it ignites.

Schopenhauer said only men had the total objectivity necessary for genius, and that you only had to look at a woman’s shape to see that she wasn’t intended for much mental or physical work.