Famous Quotes & Sayings

Arthur Schopenhauer

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Newspapers are the second hand of history.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves itto the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher.

Arthur Schopenhauer

In youth it is the outward aspect of things that most engages us; while in age, thought or reflection is the predominating qualityof the mind. Hence, youth is the time for poetry, and age is more inclined to philosophy. In practical affairs it is the same: a man shapes his resolutions in youth more by the impression that the outward world makes upon him; whereas, when he is old, it is thought that determines his actions.

Arthur Schopenhauer

To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the whole inner nature of the world , and thus to deposit it as a reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty of reason , this and nothing else is philosophy.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Das Ganze der Erfahrung gleicht einer Geheimschrift und die Philosophie der Entzifferung derselben. The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy is like the deciphering of it.

Arthur Schopenhauer

For the purpose of acquiring gain, everything else is pushed aside or thrown overboard, for example, as is philosophy by the professors of philosophy.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.

Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

Arthur Schopenhauer

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science. Experience makes us acquainted with the phenomenon in the particular and by means of examples, science embraces the whole of phenomena by means of general conceptions. So poetry seeks to make us acquainted with the Platonic Ideas through the particular and by means of examples. Philosophy aims at teaching, as a whole and in general, the inner nature of things which expresses itself in these. One sees even here that poetry bears more the character of youth, philosophy that of old age.

Arthur Schopenhauer

A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.

Arthur Schopenhauer

It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

Arthur Schopenhauer

In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Arthur Schopenhauer

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Life is a constant process of dying.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

Antonio Gramsci

Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. 'Common sense' is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood) and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.

Antonio Gramsci

Common sense is the folklore of philosophy.

Antonio Machado

My philosophy is fundamentally sad, but I’m not a sad man, and I don’t believe I sadden anyone else. In other words, the fact that I don’t put my philosophy into practice saves me from its evil spell, or, rather, my faith in the human race is stronger then my intellectual analysis of it; there lies the fountain of youth in which my heart is continually bathing.