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

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
Arthur Schopenhauer

A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
Arthur Schopenhauer

A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.
Arthur Schopenhauer

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

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer

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

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.
Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
Arthur Schopenhauer


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.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Compassion is the basis of morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer

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.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer

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

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.
Arthur Schopenhauer