Arthur Schopenhauer

Bekannte Zitate von Arthur Schopenhauer

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

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

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

Money is human happiness in the abstract he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

Hatred is an affair of the heart contempt that of the head.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another but women are by nature enemies.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.