James > James's Quotes

“I was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death. The truth … was that this world could not have been the work of an all-loving Being, but rather that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings; to this the data pointed, and the belief that it is so won the upper hand.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“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

“Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“They tell us that Suicide is the greatest piece of Cowardice... That Suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in this world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“We should not be surprised by marriages between people who would never have been friends: Love…casts itself on people who, apart from sex, would be hateful, contemptible, and even abhorrent to us. But the will of the species is so much more powerful than that of individuals, that lovers overlook everything, misjudge everything, and bind themselves forever to an object of misery.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Directly after copulation, the devil's laughter is heard.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“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.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“To marry means to do everything possible to become an object of disgust to each other.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Life has no intrinsic worth, but is kept in motion merely by desire and illusion.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.”
― Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

“Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.”
― Emil Cioran

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.”
― E. M. Cioran

“I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?”
― Emil Cioran

“أشعر أنني منفصل تماما عن كل البلدان وعن كل المجموعات. أنا متشرد
ميتافيزيقي

I feel completely detached from any country, any group.
I am a metaphysically displaced person”
― Emil Cioran