“If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at it, you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary... • If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will regulate your expectations accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or irregular; nay, you will find that everything is as it should be, in a world where each of us pays the penalty of existence in his own peculiar way.”
Arthur Schopenhauer“Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!”
Arthur Schopenhauer“Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.”
Arthur Schopenhauer“Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.”
Arthur Schopenhauer“Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.”
Arthur Schopenhauer“With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.”
Arthur Schopenhauer“It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.”
Arthur Schopenhauer“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
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