Arthur Schopenhauer

The shortness of life, so often lamented, may perhaps be the very best thing about it.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

Five minutes after birth, they decide your name, religion, nationality and sect. And you spend the rest of your life defending what you did not choose.

If a man is to be liked, he must really be inferior in point of intellect.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.

Forgetfulness is the only salvation. I would like to forget everything; to forget myself and to forget the world.

Life is a constant process of dying.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

If God made this world, then i would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart.

To be alone is the fate of all great minds.

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.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.