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Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

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Famous Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

“It is really most absurd to wish to turn this scene of misery into a pleasure spot and set ourselves the goal of achieving pleasures and joys instead of freedom from pain, as so many do. Those who, with too gloomy a gaze, regard this world as a kind of hell and, accordingly, are only concerned with procuring a fireproof room in it, are much less mistaken. The fool runs after the pleasures of life and sees himself cheated; the sage avoids evils. But if even this should fail, then it is the fault of fate, not of his foolishness. However, insofar as he succeeds, he has not been cheated; for the evils that he evades are very real. Even if he should have gone too far in avoiding them and unnecessarily sacrificed enjoyments, nothing is really lost; for all pleasures are chimerical, and to mourn over missing out on them would be petty, indeed ridiculous.”

LifeWisdomSufferingPleasureHell
Book:Counsels and Maxims
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“In plain language, every man is pent up within the limits of his own consciousness, and cannot directly get beyond those limits any more than he can get beyond his own skin; so external aid is not of much use to him. On the stage, one man is a prince, another a minister, a third a servant or a soldier or a general, and so on, — mere external differences: the inner reality, the kernel of all these appearances is the same — a poor player, with all the anxieties of his lot. In life it is just the same. Differences of rank and wealth give every man his part to play, but this by no means implies a difference of inward happiness and pleasure; here, too, there is the same being in all — a poor mortal, with his hardships and troubles.”

LifeHappinessIndividualRolesMortality
Book:The Wisdom of Life
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“There is only one inborn error, and that is the 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 things great 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 what is called disappointment.”

Life
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“After these numerous passages from the poets, I may now be permitted to express myself by a metaphor. Life and dreams are leaves of one and the same book. The systematic reading is real life, but when the actual reading hour (the day) has come to an end, and we have the period of recreation, we often continue idly to thumb over the leaves, and turn to a page here and there without method or connexion. We sometimes turn up a page we have already read, at others one still unknown to us, but always from the same book. Such an isolated page is, of course, not connected with a consistent reading and study of the book, yet it is not so very inferior thereto, if we note that the whole of the consistent perusal begins and ends also on the spur of the moment, and can therefore be regarded merely as a larger single page. Thus, although individual dreams are marked off from real life by the fact that they do not fit into the continuity of experience that runs constantly through life, and waking up indicates this difference, yet that very continuity of experience belongs to real life as its form, and the dream can likewise point to a continuity in itself. Now if we assume a standpoint of judgement external to both, we find no distinct difference in their nature, and are forced to concede to the poets that life is a long dream.”

LifeDreamsLife As A Dream
Book:The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
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“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.”

LifeLittlesTodayDeathSleepMorningDyingYouthBirthGrievingRisingEach DayWakingEvery MorningGood DayGood MorningHave A Good DayTalkativeFunny SleepBeautiful MorningMorning InspirationalGood Morning InspirationalWaking Up Every MorningGreetings In The MorningMorning MotivationGood Day InspirationalRest And SleepRising In The Morning
Book:Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer
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