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Schopenhauer Quotes

Browse 27 quotes about Schopenhauer.

Schopenhauer Quotes

“The will has no overall purpose, aims at no highest good, and can never be satisfied. Although it is our essence, it strikes us as an alien agency within, striving for life and procreation blindly, mediated only secondarily by consciousness. Instinctive sexuality is at our core, interfering constantly with the life of the intellect. To be an individual expression of this will is to lead a life of continual desire, deficiency, and suffering. Pleasure or satisfaction exists only relative to a felt lack; it is negative, merely the cessation of an episode of striving or suffering, and has no value of itself. Nothing we can achieve by conscious act of will alters the will to life within us. There is no free will. Human actions, as part of the natural order, are determined [....] As individual parts of the empirical world we are ineluctably pushed through life by a force inside us which is not of our choosing, which gives rise to needs and desires we can never fully satisfy, and is without ultimate purpose. Schopenhauer concludes that it would have been better not to exist—and that the world itself is something whose existence we should deplore rather than celebrate.”

DesireSufferingPleasureConsciousnessSatisfactionSexualityFree WillWillDeterminismSchopenhauer
Author:Christopher Janaway
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“I bear within me the seed, the rudiments, the possibility of life's capacities and endeavors. Where might I be, if I were not here? Who, what, how could I be, if I were not me, if this outward appearance that is me did not encase me, separating my consciousness from that of others who are not me? An organism—a blind, rash, pitiful eruption of the insistent assertion of the will. Far better, really, if that will were to drift free in a night without time or space, than to languish in a prison cell lit only by the flickering, uncertain flame of the intellect.”

DeathIndividualityCatholicismWillProtestantismSchopenhauer
Book:Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
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“The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients, other important projects and activities-writing, teaching, tennis, research-clamored for his attention. But today nothing seemed important. He suspected that nothing had ever been important, that his mind had arbitrarily imbued projects with importance and then cunningly covered its traces. Today he saw through the ruse of a lifetime. Today there was nothing important to do, and he ambled aimlessly down Union Street.”

PhilosophyPsychologyPsychotherapySchopenhauer
Book:The Schopenhauer Cure
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“The difference between love and will, although only formal, is fatal regarding the worldview or outlook of the philosopher in question. Everything must be joyous for the one coming from the principle of love, but for the one coming from the principle of will, as a blind force and strife, the world is less rosy and cheerful. This pessimism comes less from two inherently different models that would imply two different sets of rules (happiness, among other things) but more from the inability of the world to get rid of its will, which is to say, to commit suicide, to get rid of itself. In the case of love, this proposition is impossible because that is a joyous and lovely world. Still, in the case of blind will, the main characteristic of the world is existence at any cost, regardless of hardship, misery, and pain.”

OptimismPessimismDejan StojanovicAbsoluteSchopenhauer
Book:ABSOLUTE
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“Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule. I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt.”

Inspirational QuotesOptimismSchopenhauer
Author:Schopenhauer, Arthur
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“[On Schopenhauer in Black and White] Schopenhauer's views of love are flawed. Love can't be merely an illusion of the mind to aid in procreation, but the path to redemption for an otherwise violently selfish species. Past human greatness has proven that when challenged, love can overpower impulsive instinct, and in essence, the vilest aspects of our nature.”

LoveMindHumanityNaturePowerViolenceHuman NatureHumanIllusionEssenceInstinctSpeciesSelfishViolentRedemptionHuman ConditionLoverChallengeProcreationInstinctsFlawSchopenhauerOverpowerSchopenhauer As Educator
Author:Tiffany Madison
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“We are like a man who goes round a castle seeking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the facades. If we can ferret out the ultimate nature of our own minds we shall perhaps have the key to the external world.”

MindIdealismWillIdeaConceptSchopenhauerUniversal Idea
Book:The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
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“... we find a complete contradiction in our wishing to live without suffering, a contradiction that is therefore implied by the frequently used phrase “blessed life.” This will certainly be clear to the person who has fully grasped my discussion that follows. This contradiction is revealed in this ethic of pure reason itself by the fact that the Stoic is compelled to insert a recommendation of suicide in his guide to the blissful life (for this is what his ethics always remains). This is like the costly phial of poison to be found among the magnificent ornaments and apparel of oriental despots, and is for the case where the sufferings of the body, incapable of being philosophized away by any principles and syllogisms, are paramount and incurable. Thus its sole purpose, namely blessedness, is frustrated, and nothing remains as a means of escape from pain except death. But then death must be taken with unconcern, just as is any other medicine. Here a marked contrast is evident between the Stoic ethics and all those other ethical systems mentioned above. These ethical systems make virtue directly and in itself the aim and object, even with the most grievous sufferings, and will not allow a man to end his life in order to escape from suffering. But not one of them knew how to express the true reason for rejecting suicide, but they laboriously collected fictitious arguments of every kind. This true reason will appear in the fourth book in connexion with our discussion. But the above-mentioned contrast reveals and confirms just that essential difference to be found in the fundamental principle between the Stoa, really only a special form of eudaemonism, and the doctrines just mentioned, although both often agree in their results, and are apparently related. But the above-mentioned inner contradiction, with which the Stoic ethics is affected even in its fundamental idea, further shows itself in the fact that its ideal, the Stoic sage as represented by this ethical system, could never obtain life or inner poetical truth, but remains a wooden, stiff lay-figure with whom one can do nothing. He himself does not know where to go with his wisdom, and his perfect peace, contentment, and blessedness directly contradict the nature of mankind, and do not enable us to arrive at any perceptive representation thereof. Compared with him, how entirely different appear the overcomers of the world and voluntary penitents, who are revealed to us, and are actually produced, by the wisdom of India; how different even the Saviour of Christianity, that excellent form full of the depth of life, of the greatest poetical truth and highest significance, who stands before us with perfect virtue, holiness, and sublimity, yet in a state of supreme suffering.”

SufferingSuicideStoicismSchopenhauer
Book:The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
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“No man can see over his own height. Let me explain what I mean. You cannot see in another man any more than you have in yourself. Your own level strictly determines the extent to which he comes within your understanding. If your intelligence is unawakened, mental qualities in another, even though they be of the highest kind, will have no effect on you at all… his higher mental qualities will no more exist for you than colors exist for those who cannot see.”

SelfIgnoranceIntelligenceHeightRaritySchopenhauer
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“...music does not express this or that particular and definite pleasure, this or that affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, or peace of mind, but joy, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, peace of mind themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature, without any accessories, and so also without the motives for them. Nevertheless, we understand them perfectly in this extracted quintessence. Hence it arises that our imagination is so easily stirred by music, and tries to shape that invisible, yet vividly aroused, spirit-world that speaks to us directly, to clothe it with flesh and bone, and thus to embody it in an analogous example.”

MusicSchopenhauer
Book:The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
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“Plus je lis les pessimistes, plus j'aime la vie. Après une lecture de Schopenhauer, je réagis comme un fiancé. Schopenhauer a raison de prétendre que la vie n'est qu'un rêve. Mais il commet une inconséquence grave quand, au lieu d'encourager les illusions, il les démasque en laissant croire qu'il existerait quelque chose en dehors d'elles. Qui pourrait supporter la vie, si elle était réelle? Rêve, elle est un mélange de charme et de terreur auquel nous succombons.”

RêveSchopenhauerPessimisteCharmeTerreur
Book:Oeuvres
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“Acel gest simbolic de a o întrona pe Déesse Raison la Notre-Dame pare să fi însemnat pentru lumea apuseană ceva asemănător cu tăierea Stejarilor lui Wotan de către misionarii creştini, căci nici atunci, nici acum, fulgerul răzbunător nu i-a lovit pe nelegiuiţi. Este probabil mai mult decât o glumă a istoriei universale faptul că tocmai în acel moment şi tocmai un francez, Anquetil du Perron, se afla în India şi, la începutul secolului al XIX-lea, aducea acasă o traducere a Oupnek’hat, o culegere de cincizeci de Upanişade, care au permis pentru prima oară Occidentului să arunce o privire mai adâncă înăuntrul enigmaticului spirit al Orientului … Masa anonimă de oameni întunecaţi, care s-a adunat cu gânduri distrugătoare în Notre-Dame, s-a năpustit şi asupra individului, nimerindu-l şi pe Anquetil du Perron, în care a provocat un răspuns devenit istoric. De la el se trag Schopenhauer şi Nietzsche, de la el apare acea influenţă spirituală încă incalculabilă a Orientului.”

EnlightenmentFrench RevolutionNietzscheSchopenhauerUpanishadIrationalism
Book:Civilization in transition
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“there is found a third level of religious experience, even if it is seldom found in a pure form. I will call it the cosmic religious sense. This is hard to make clear to those who do not experience it, since it does not involve an anthropomorphic idea of God; the individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. He feels the individual destiny as an imprisonment and seeks to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance. Indications of this cosmic religious sense can be found even on earlier levels of development—for example, in the Psalms of David and in the Prophets. The cosmic element is much stronger in Buddhism, as, in particular, Schopenhauer's magnificent essays have shown us. The religious geniuses of all times have been distinguished by this cosmic religious sense, which recognizes neither dogmas nor God made in man's image. Consequently there cannot be a church whose chief doctrines are based on the cosmic religious experience. It comes about, therefore, that we find precisely among the heretics of all ages men who were inspired by this highest religious experience; often they appeared to their contemporaries as atheists, but sometimes also as saints.”

GodReligionSpiritualityAtheismBuddhismHeresySchopenhauer1930New York Times Magazine
Book:Religion and Science
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