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Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

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Famous Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

“In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.”

KnowsMeanChildrenPlaySeemsMightHappensSpiritWaitingYouthBlessingSittingRaisedSentencesTheatreInnocentUnconsciousPrisonerContemplatingCurtains
Book:Suffering, Suicide and Immortality: Eight Essays from The Parerga
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“As the strata of the earth preserve in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expositions, which like the former were very lively and made a great commotion in their own age but now stand petrified and stiff in a place where only the literary palaeontologist regards them.”

MadeAgeEarthPastCreaturesRegardErrorsLibraryFormerPreservesShelvesSuccessionLivelyLiving Creatures
Book:On the Suffering of the World
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“There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.”

WorldPersonsLongSeemsPurposeOrderExistenceStepsExpressionErrorsNotionBoundsDisappointmentInsightGreat ThingsContradictionPersistMaintainingElderlyEvery StepCountenanceWorld And Life
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“I observed once to Goethe that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself.”

ThinkingMovingFormLawIndividualityAbsentAbsent Friends
Book:The Art of Controversy: And Other Posthumous Papers
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“The auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start saying farewell to all uprightness, honesty and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists [Fichte, Schelling and Hegel], first a false pathos, then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair of ever being able to convince.”

IfsFirstsPhilosophyAbleOrderThreeAirHonestyDespairInfiniteAssumingPassingPassingsConvinceAffectedSincerityInvestigationSuperiorityFarewellLoftyProceedingPathosEarnestnessHegelSaying FarewellUprightness
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“If, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of our contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the temple of truth?”

IfsLooksDifferentHandsStarsInterestRocksParticularTasteAffairInstanceTemplesSuggestionsHintsReinsHurryingPersonal InterestFoiblesGuiding Stars
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“Malebranche teaches that we see all things in God himself. This is certainly equivalent to explaining something unknown by something even more unknown. Moreover, according to him, we see not only all things in God, but God is also the sole activity therein, so that physical causes are so only apparently; they are merely occasional causes. ( Recherches de la vérité , Livre VI, seconde partie, chap. 3.) And so here we have essentially the pantheism of Spinoza who appears to have learned more from Malebranche than from Descartes.”

CausesTeachActivityAll ThingsSoleExplainingOccasionalPantheismChapsSpinoza
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany , then everything done by man, and even by animal, is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else; hence there is no ethics.”

IfsMenWorldDoneSufferingEvilAnimalDivineDemandEthicsExcellentPantheismPraiseworthyEvil And Suffering
Book:The World as Will and Representation
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“The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.”

MenWorldGivingDoeArtistLanguageInformationHe ManAwakeReasoningFacultyConceptionComposerMagnetic
Book:The World as Will and Representation
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“At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.”

YearsFirstsAgeHoursMillionsFiveFateTenBreathsSatisfactionDrawingPerformingFive YearsLabourFactoriesTwelveSpinningFourteenCotton
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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