Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauerwas a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation, in which he characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind, insatiable, and malignant metaphysical will. Proceeding from the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism, rejecting the contemporaneous post-Kantian philosophies of German idealism. Schopenhauer was among the first thinkers in Western...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth22 February 1788
CountryGermany
Human life must be some form of mistake.
Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with great riches.
To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.
Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light.
If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease.
Unrest is the mark of existence.
The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.
Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred.
The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance off.
Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say defunctus est; it means that the man has done his task.
There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius.
A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.
Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.