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Arthur Schopenhauer quotes
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 to 1860) was a German philosopher, born in Danzig, who spent his later years in Frankfurt. His main work, The World as Will and Representation, went largely unread until the essays of Parerga and Paralipomena brought him fame in the 1850s. Quill quotes Counsels and Maxims and Studies in Pessimism, T. Bailey Saunders's English selections from that later book.
His reputation for gloom is earned, but the Counsels are strangely practical. Expect sensible advice from a grumpy man about friends, money and how to be alone.
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Counsels and Maxims
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The most terrible misfortunes are also the most improbable and remote—the least likely to occur.
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Do not omit to sacrifice to evil spirits. What I mean is, that a man should not hesitate about spending time, trouble, and money, or giving up his comfort, or restricting his aims and denying himself, if he can thereby shut the door on the possibility of misfortune. The most terrible misfortunes are also the most improbable and remote—the least likely to occur. The rule I am giving is best exemplified in the practice of insurance,—a public sacrifice made on the altar of anxiety. Therefore take out your policy of insurance!
Envy is natural to man; and still, it is at once a vice and a source of misery.
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SECTION 10. Envy is natural to man; and still, it is at once a vice and a source of misery. We should treat it as the enemy of our happiness, and stifle it like an evil thought. This is the advice given by Seneca; as he well puts it, we shall be pleased with what we have, if we avoid the self-torture of comparing our own lot with some other and happier one—nostra nos …
The brain can be ruined by overstrain, just like the eyes.
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It should be clearly understood that thought is nothing but the organic function of the brain; and it has to obey the same laws in regard to exertion and repose as any other organic function. The brain can be ruined by overstrain, just like the eyes. As the function of the stomach is to digest, so it is that of the brain to think. The notion of a soul,—as something elementary and immaterial, merely lodging in the brain and needing nothing at all for the performance of its essential function, which consists in always and …
On the other hand, we are often wiser than we fancy ourselves to be.
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But above and beyond all this, there is another influence that makes itself felt in our lives. It is a trite saying—only too frequently true—that we are often more foolish than we think. On the other hand, we are often wiser than we fancy ourselves to be. This, however, is a discovery which only those can make, of whom it is really true; and it takes them a long time to make it. Our brains are not the wisest part of us. In the great moments of life, when a man decides upon an important step, his action is directed not so much …
To have no regular work, no set sphere of activity—what a miserable thing it is!
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Let everyone, then, do something, according to the measure of his capacities. To have no regular work, no set sphere of activity—what a miserable thing it is! How often long travels undertaken for pleasure make a man downright unhappy; because the absence of anything that can be called occupation forces him, as it were, out of his right element. Effort, struggles with difficulties! that is as natural to a man as grubbing in the …
Peace of mind is impossible without a considerable amount of solitude.
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… to dispense with the necessity of their company is a great piece of good fortune; because almost all our sufferings spring from having to do with other people; and that destroys the peace of mind, which, as I have said, comes next after health in the elements of happiness. Peace of mind is impossible without a considerable amount of solitude. The Cynics renounced all private property in order to attain the bliss of having nothing to trouble them; and to renounce society with the same object is the wisest thing a man can do. Bernardin de Saint Pierre has the very excellent and pertinent remark that to be sparing in …
Effort, struggles with difficulties! that is as natural to a man as grubbing in the ground is to a mole.
Let your enemies' censure be like a bitter medicine, to be used as a means of self-knowledge.
Let everyone, then, do something, according to the measure of his capacities.
A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles,—for then he is off his guard.
Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.
To affect a quality, and to plume yourself upon it, is just to confess that you have not got it.
To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire.
We should be still more on our guard against distressing our hearts by depicting possible misfortunes.
The most finished man of the world would be one who was never irresolute and never in a hurry.
Distance, which makes objects look small to the outward eye, makes them look big to the eye of thought.
Is it not a fact that we always feel a marked improvement in our spirits when we begin to get over a period of anxiety?
If you hold small objects close to your eyes, you limit your field of vision and shut out the world.
Courage comes next to prudence as a quality of mind very essential to happiness.
The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is made.
A man should avoid being led on by the phantoms of his imagination.
Limitations always make for happiness.
Great minds are like eagles, and build their nest in some lofty solitude.
To measure the happiness of a life by its delights or pleasures, is to apply a false standard.
Studies in Pessimism
Read Studies in Pessimism on Project Gutenberg
A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.
Every evening we are poorer by a day.
The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
The whole foundation on which our existence rests is the present—the ever-fleeting present.
Of every event in our life we can say only for one moment that it is; for ever after, that it was.
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