Qvasi > Qvasi's Quotes

“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

“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism: The Essays

“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

“The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech...As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere...When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts. ”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

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

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

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer , Studies in Pessimism: The Essays

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

“So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“What a person is for himself, what abides with him in his loneliness and isolation, and what no one can give or take away from him, this is obviously more essential for him than everything that he possesses or what he may be in the eyes of others...”
― Schopenhauer

“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims

“Students and scholars of all kinds and of every age aim, as a rule, only at information, not insight. They make it a point of honour to have information about everything, every stone, plant, battle, or experiment and about all books, collectively and individually. It never occurs to them that information is merely a means to insight, but in itself is of little or no value.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.

- On Religion”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion

“If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing. . . If I perform to myself, then it’s this that the style expresses. And then the style cannot be my own. If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The primary question about life after death is not whether it is a fact, but even if it is, what problems that really solves.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier and simpler.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“What labels me, negates me.”
― Soren Kierkegaard