Reader > Reader's Quotes

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.”
― Albert Camus

“Life is a sum of all your choices".

So, what are you doing today?”
― Albert Camus

“Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about. In my prison, when the sky turned red and a new day slipped into my cell, I found out that she was right.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Madness, mayhem, erotic vandalism, devastation of innumerable souls - while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“No other life forms know they are alive, and neither do they know they will die. This is our curse alone. Without this hex upon our heads, we would never have withdrawn as far as we have from the natural—so far and for such a time that it is a relief to say what we have been trying with our all not to say: We have long since been denizens of the natural world. Everywhere around us are natural habitats, but within us is the shiver of startling and dreadful things. Simply put: We are not from here. If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

“The pessimist’s credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

“So they trust in the deity of the Old Testament, an incontinent dotard who soiled Himself and the universe with his corruption, a low-budget divinity passing itself off as the genuine article. (Ask the Gnostics.) They trust in Jesus Christ, a historical cipher stitched together like Frankenstein's monster out of parts robbed from the graves of messiahs dead and buried - a savior on a stick. They trust in the virgin-pimping Allah and his Drum Major Mohammed, a prophet-come-lately who pioneered a new genus of humbuggery for an emerging market of believers that was not being adequately served by existing religious products. They trust in anything that authenticates their importance as persons, tribes, societies, and particularly as a species that will endure in this world and perhaps in an afterworld that may be uncertain in its reality and unclear in its layout, but which states their craving for values "not of this earth" - that depressing, meaningless place their consciousness must sidestep every day.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays

“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another’s thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid.”
― arthur schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.”
― Schopenhauer, Arthur, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think. ”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Marrying means to halve one's rights and double one's duties”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.

In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“We seldom think of what we have, but always of what we lack.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer