National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!
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
If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment -- a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can't expect an angel to look out.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.
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
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
Arthur Schopenhauer
To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.