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At The Age Of Five Years To Enter A Spinning-cotton Or Other Factory, And From That Time Forth To Sit There Daily, First Ten, Then Twelve, And Ultimately Fourteen Hours, Performing The Same Mechanical Labour, Is To Purchase Dearly The Satisfaction Of Drawing Breath. But This Is The Fate Of Millions, And That Of Millions More Is Analogous To It.

-Arthur Schopenhauer

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At The Age Of

Arthur Schopenhauer

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At The Age Of Five Years To Enter A Spinning-cotton Or Other Factory, And From That Time Forth To Sit There Daily, First Ten, Then Twelve, And Ultimately Fourteen Hours, Performing The Same Mechanical Labour, Is To Purchase Dearly The Satisfaction Of Drawing Breath. But This Is The Fate Of Millions, And That Of Millions More Is Analogous To It.

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More From Arthur Schopenhauer

Want And Boredom Are Indeed The Twin Poles Of Human Life.

However, For The Man Who Studies To Gain Insight, Books And Studies Are Merely Rungs Of The Ladder On Which He Climbs To The Summit Of Knowledge. As Soon As A Rung Has Raised Him Up One Step, He Leaves It Behind. On The Other Hand, The Many Who Study In Order To Fill Their Memory Do Not Use The Rungs Of The Ladder For Climbing, But Take Them Off And Load Themselves With Them To Take Away, Rejoicing At The Increasing Weight Of The Burden. They Remain Below Forever, Because They Bear What Should Have Bourne Them.

Poetry Is Related To Philosophy As Experience Is Related To Empirical Science. Experience Makes Us Acquainted With The Phenomenon In The Particular And By Means Of Examples, Science Embraces The Whole Of Phenomena By Means Of General Conceptions. So Poetry Seeks To Make Us Acquainted With The Platonic Ideas Through The Particular And By Means Of Examples. Philosophy Aims At Teaching, As A Whole And In General, The Inner Nature Of Things Which Expresses Itself In These. One Sees Even Here That Poetry Bears More The Character Of Youth, Philosophy That Of Old Age.

The Real Meaning Of Persona Is A Mask, Such As Actors Were Accustomed To Wear On The Ancient Stage; And It Is Quite True That No One Shows Himself As He Is, But Wears His Mask And Plays His Part. Indeed, The Whole Of Our Social Arrangements May Be Likened To A Perpetual Comedy; And This Is Why A Man Who Is Worth Anything Finds Society So Insipid, While A Blockhead Is Quite At Home In It.

Religion Is The Masterpiece Of The Art Of Animal Training, For It Trains People As To How They Shall Think.

The Present Is The Only Reality And The Only Certainty.

Life Without Pain Has No Meaning.

In Our Monogamous Part Of The World, To Marry Means To Halve One's Rights And Double One's Duties.

The Tallest Oak Tree Once Was An Acorn That Any Pig Could Have Swallowed.

Men Are The Devils Of The Earth, And The Animals Are Its Tormented Souls.

It Would Be Better If There Were Nothing. Since There Is More Pain Than Pleasure On Earth, Every Satisfaction Is Only Transitory, Creating New Desires And New Distresses, And The Agony Of The Devoured Animal Is Always Far Greater Than The Pleasure Of The Devourer

Life To The Great Majority Is Only A Constant Struggle For Mere Existence, With The Certainty Of Losing It At Last.

Materialism Is The Philosophy Of The Subject Who Forgets To Take Account Of Himself.

The Discovery Of Truth Is Prevented More Effectively, Not By The False Appearance Things Present And Which Mislead Into Error, Not Directly By Weakness Of The Reasoning Powers, But By Preconceived Opinion, By Prejudice.

Almost All Of Our Sorrows Spring Out Of Our Relations With Other People.

A Happy Life Is Impossible; The Best That A Man Can Attain Is A Heroic Life.

Nothing Shocks Our Moral Feelings So Deeply As Cruelty Does. We Can Forgive Every Other Crime, But Not Cruelty. The Reason For This Is That It Is The Very Opposite Of Compassion.

I Constantly Saw The False And The Bad, And Finally The Absurd And The Senseless, Standing In Universal Admiration And Honour.

It Is A Clumsy Experiment To Make; For It Involves The Destruction Of The Very Consciousness Which Puts The Question And Awaits The Answer.

All Our Wanting Comes From Needs, Thus We Continiously Suffer. The Intellect Teaches Free Will, Free From Suffering.

... That When You're Buying Books, You're Optimistically Thinking You're Buying The Time To Read Them. (paraphrase Of Schopenhauer)

For An Act To Be Moral The Intention Must Be Based On Compassion, Not Duty. We Do Something Because We Want To Do It, Because We Feel We Have To Do It, Not Because We Ought To Do It. And Even If Our Efforts Fail - Or We Never Even Get To Implement Them - We Are Still Moral Because Our Motivation Was Based On Compassion.

Just As The Largest Library, Badly Arranged, Is Not So Useful As A Very Moderate One That Is Well Arranged, So The Greatest Amount Of Knowledge, If Not Elaborated By Our Own Thoughts, Is Worth Much Less Than A Far Smaller Volume That Has Been Abundantly And Repeatedly Thought Over.

The Conviction That The World And Man Is Something That Had Better Not Have Been, Is Of A Kind To Fill Us With Indulgence Towards One Another.

Every Man Takes The Limits Of His Own Field Of Vision For The Limits Of The World. This Is An Error Of The Intellect As Inevitable As That Error Of The Eye Which Lets You Fancy That On The Horizon Heaven And Earth Meet.

It Is Difficult, If Not Impossible, To Define The Limit Of Our Reasonable Desires In Respect Of Possessions.

Whatever Torch We Kindle, And Whatever Space It May Illuminate, Our Horizon Will Always Remain Encircled By The Depth Of Night.

What Makes People Hard-hearted Is This, That Each Man Has, Or Fancies He Has, As Much As He Can Bear In His Own Troubles.

For, As You Know, Religions Are Like Glow-worms; They Shine Only When It Is Dark.

He Who Writes Carelessly Confesses Thereby At The Very Outset That He Does Not Attach Much Importance To His Own Thoughts.

Descartes Is Rightly Regarded As The Father Of Modern Philosophy Primarily And Generally Because He Helped The Faculty Of Reason To Stand On Its Own Feet By Teaching Men To Use Their Brains In Place Whereof The Bible, On The One Hand, And Aristotle, On The Other, Had Previously Served.

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.

It Is With Trifles, And When He Is Off Guard, That A Man Best Reveals His Character.

If A Relationship Is Perfectly Natural There Will Be A Complete Fusion Of The Happiness Of Both Of You-owing To Fellow-feeling And Various Other Laws Which Govern Our Natures, This Is, Quite Simply, The Greatest Happiness That Can Exist.

There Is One Respect In Which Beasts Show Real Wisdom... Their Quiet, Placid Enjoyment Of The Present Moment.

Every Human Perfection Is Linked To An Error Which It Threatens To Turn Into

For, After All, The Foundation Of Our Whole Nature, And, Therefore, Of Our Happiness, Is Our Physique, And The Most Essential Factor In Happiness Is Health, And, Next In Importance After Health, The Ability To Maintain Ourselves In Independence And Freedom From Care.

The Man Never Feels The Want Of What It Never Occurs To Him To Ask For.

Great Men Are Like Eagles, And Build Their Nest On Some Lofty Solitude.

Every Satisfaction He Attains Lays The Seeds Of Some New Desire, So That There Is No End To The Wishes Of Each Individual Will.

No One Knows What Capacities For Doing And Suffering He Has In Himself, Until Something Comes To Rouse Them To Activity: Just As In A Pond Of Still Water, Lying There Like A Mirror, There Is No Sign Of The Roar And Thunder With Which It Can Leap From The Precipice, And Yet Remain What It Is; Or Again, Rise High In The Air As A Fountain. When Water Is As Cold As Ice, You Can Have No Idea Of The Latent Warmth Contained In It.

Mostly The Loss Teaches Us Only About The Value Of Things.

Memory Works Like The Collection Glass In The Camera Obscura: It Gathers Everything Together And Therewith Produces A Far More Beautiful Picture Than Was Present Originally.

Where There Is No Love, A Person's Faithfulness To The Marriage Bond Is Probably Against Nature.

Whether We Are In A Pleasant Or A Painful State Depends, Finally, Upon The Kind Of Matter That Pervades And Engrosses Our Consciousness And What We Compare It To - Better And We Envious And Sad, Worse And We Feel Grateful And Happy.

It Is Only A Man's Own Fundamental Thoughts That Have Truth And Life In Them. For It Is These That He Really And Completely Understands. To Read The Thoughts Of Others Is Like Taking The Remains Of Someone Else's Meal, Like Putting On The Discarded Clothes Of A Stranger.

Universal Compassion Is The Only Guarantee Of Morality.

With People Of Limited Ability Modesty Is Merely Honesty. But With Those Who Possess Great Talent It Is Hypocrisy.

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.

Restlessness Is The Hallmark Of Existence.

If The Lives Of Men Were Relieved Of All Need, Hardship And Adversity; If Everything They Took In Hand Were Successful, They Would Be So Swollen With Arrogance That, Though They Might Not Burst, They Would Present The Spectacle Of Unbridled Folly-nay, They Would Go Mad. And I May Say, Further, That A Certain Amount Of Care Or Pain Or Trouble Is Necessary For Every Man At All Times. A Ship Without Ballast Is Unstable And Will Not Go Straight.

Suicide May Also Be Regarded As An Experiment - A Question Which Man Puts To Nature, Trying To Force Her To Answer. The Question Is This: What Change Will Death Produce In A Man's Existence And In His Insight Into The Nature Of Things? It Is A Clumsy Experiment To Make; For It Involves The Destruction Of The Very Consciousness Which Puts The Question And Awaits The Answer.

We Seldom Speak Of What We Have But Often Of What We Lack.

Scoundrels Are Always Sociable.

Human Condition

The Difficulty Is To Try And Teach The Multitude That Something Can Be True And Untrue At The Same Time.

Mostly It Is Loss Which Teaches Us About The Worth Of Things.

The Inexpressible Depth Of Music, So Easy To Understand And Yet So Inexplicable, Is Due To The Fact That It Reproduces All The Emotions Of Our Innermost Being, But Entirely Without Reality And Remote From Its Pain… Music Expresses Only The Quintessence Of Life And Its Events, Never These Themselves.

The Common Man Is Not Concerned About The Passage Of Time, The Man Of Talent Is Driven By It.

If Life — The Craving For Which Is The Very Essence Of Our Being — Were Possessed Of Any Positive Intrinsic Value, There Would Be No Such Thing As Boredom At All: Mere Existence Would Satisfy Us In Itself, And We Should Want For Nothing.

History Is The Long, Difficult And Confused Dream Of Mankind.

On The Path Of Actions, Great Heart Is The Chief Recommendation; On That Works, A Great Head.

Our Civilized World Is Nothing But A Great Masquerade. You Encounter Knights, Parsons, Soldiers, Doctors, Lawyers, Priests, Philosophers And A Thousand More: But They Are Not What They Appear - They Are Merely Masks... Usually, As I Say, There Is Nothing But Industrialists, Businessmen And Speculators Concealed Behind All These Masks.

Obstinacy Is The Result Of The Will Forcing Itself Into The Place Of The Intellect.

The Brain May Be Regarded As A Kind Of Parasite Of The Organism, A Pensioner, As It Were, Who Dwells With The Body.

Reason Deserves To Be Called A Prophet; For In Showing Us The Consequence And Effect Of Our Actions In The Present, Does It Not Tell Us What The Future Will Be?

Were An Asiatic To Ask Me For A Definition Of Europe, I Should Be Forced To Answer Him: It Is That Part Of The World Which Is Haunted By The Incredible Delusion That Man Was Created Out Of Nothing, And That His Present Birth Is His First Entrance Into Life.

Consciousness Is The Mere Surface Of Our Minds, Of Which, As Of The Earth, We Do Not Know The Inside, But Only The Crust.

Genius And Madness Have Something In Common: Both Live In A World That Is Different From That Which Exists For Everyone Else.

Opinion Is Like A Pendulum And Obeys The Same Law.

Talent Works For Money And Fame; The Motive Which Moves Genius To Productivity Is, On The Other Hand, Less Easy To Determine.

Of All The Intellectual Faculties, Judgment Is The Last To Mature. A Child Under The Age Of Fifteen Should Confine Its Attention Either To Subjects Like Mathematics, In Which Errors Of Judgment Are Impossible, Or To Subjects In Which They Are Not Very Dangerous, Like Languages, Natural Science, History, Etc.

There Is A Wide Difference Between The Original Thinker And The Merely Learned Man.

Wir Tappen Im Labyrinth Unsers Lebenswandels Und Im Dunkel Unserer Forschungen Umher: Helleaugenblicke Erleuchten Dabei Wie Blitze Unsernweg. We Grope About In The Labyrinth Of Our Life And In The Obscurity Of Our Investigations; Bright Moments Illuminate Our Path Like Flashes Of Lightning.

The Weakness Of Their Reasoning Faculty Also Explains Why Women Show More Sympathy For The Unfortunate Than Men;... And Why, On The Contrary, They Are Inferior To Men As Regards Justice, And Less Honourable And Conscientious.

Any Foolish Boy Can Stamp On A Beetle, But All The Professors In The World Cannot Make A Beetle.

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.

Thus Also Every Keen Pleasure Is An Error And An Illusion, For No Attained Wish Can Give Lasting Satisfaction.

Consider The Koran... This Wretched Book Was Sufficient To Start A World-religion, To Satisfy The Metaphysical Need Of Countless Millions For Twelve Hundred Years, To Become The Basis Of Their Morality And Of A Remarkable Contempt For Death, And Also To Inspire Them To Bloody Wars And The Most Extensive Conquests. In This Book We Find The Saddest And Poorest Form Of Theism. Much May Be Lost In Translation, But I Have Not Been Able To Discover In It One Single Idea Of Value.

To Desire Immortality Is To Desire The Eternal Perpetuation Of A Great Mistake

To Desire Immortality For The Individual Is Really The Same As Wanting To Perpetuate An Error Forever.

The Brut First Knows Death When It Dies, But Man Draws Consciously Nearer To It Every Hour That He Lives; And This Makes His Life At Times A Questionable Good Even To Him Who Has Not Recognised This Character Of Constant Anaihilation In The Whole Of Life.

Suffering By Nature Or Chance Never Seems So Painful As Suffering Inflicted On Us By The Arbitrary Will Of Another.

World Suffering

It Is Only In The Microscope That Our Life Looks So Big. It Is An Indivisible Point, Drawn Out And Magnified By The Powerful Lenses Of Time And Space.

Pleasure Is Never As Pleasant As We Expected It To Be And Pain Is Always More Painful. The Pain In The World Always Outweighs The Pleasure. If You Don't Believe It, Compare The Respective Feelings Of Two Animals, One Of Which Is Eating The Other.

That I Could Clamber To The Frozen Moon. And Draw The Ladder After Me.

No Rose Without A Thorn But Many A Thorn Without A Rose.

Genius Is Its Own Reward; For The Best That One Is, One Must Necessarily Be For Oneself. . . . Further, Genius Consists In The Working Of The Free Intellect., And As A Consequence The Productions Of Genius Serve No Useful Purpose. The Work Of Genius May Be Music, Philosophy, Painting, Or Poetry; It Is Nothing For Use Or Profit. To Be Useless And Unprofitable Is One Of The Characteristics Of Genius; It Is Their Patent Of Nobility.

Every Original Idea Is First Ridiculed, Then Vigorously Attacked, And Finally Taken For Granted.

All Wanting Comes From Need, Therefore From Lack, Therefore From Suffering.

A High Degree Of Intellect Tends To Make A Man Unsocial.

It Is The Courage To Make A Clean Breast Of It In The Face Of Every Question That Makes The Philosopher.

Before You Take Anything Away, You Must Have Something Better To Put In Its Place.

Something Better

It Takes Place, By And Large, With The Same Sort Of Necessity As A Tree Brings Forth Fruit, And Demands Of The World No More Than A Soil On Which The Individual Can Flourish.

How Is It Possible That Suffering That Is Neither My Own Nor Of My Concern Should Immediately Affect Me As Though It Were My Own, And With Such Force That Is Moves Me To Action?

Unrest Is The Mark Of Existence.

This World Could Not Have Been The Work Of An All-loving Being, But That Of A Devil, Who Had Brought Creatures Into Existence In Order To Delight In The Sight Of Their Sufferings.

The Progress Of Life Shows A Man The Stuff Of Which He Is Made.

Our Moral Virtues Benefit Mainly Other People; Intellectual Virtues, On The Other Hand, Benefit Primarily Ourselves; Therefore The Former Make Us Universally Popular, The Latter Unpopular.

Money Is Human Happiness In The Abstract.

In Truth The Most Striking Figure For The Relation Of The Two Is That Of The Strong Blind Man Carrying The Sighted Lame Man On His Shoulders.

Knowledge Is To Certain Extent A Second Existence.

A Pessimist Is An Optimist In Full Possession Of The Facts.

It Is Only At The First Encounter That A Face Makes Its Full Impression On Us.

First Impression

I Owe What Is Best In My Own Development To The Impression Made By Kant's Works, The Sacred Writings Of The Hindus, And Plato.

Mankind Cannot Get On Without A Certain Amount Of Absurdity.

To Truth Only A Brief Celebration Of Victory Is Allowed Between The Two Long Periods During Which It Is Condemned As Paradoxical, Or Disparaged As Trivial.

A Man Can Do What He Wants, But Not Want What He Wants.

Time Is That In Which All Things Pass Away.

Time Management

In Reading, The Mind Is, In Fact, Only The Playground Of Another's Thoughts.

Everybody's Friend Is Nobody's.

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.

I Observed Once To Goethe That When A Friend Is With Us We Do Not Think The Same Of Him As When He Is Away. He Replied, "yes! Because The Absent Friend Is Yourself, And He Exists Only In Your Head; Whereas The Friend Who Is Present Has An Individuality Of His Own, And Moves According To Laws Of His Own, Which Cannot Always Be In Accordance With Those Which You Form For Yourself.

Music Is The Answer To The Mystery Of Life. The Most Profound Of All The Arts, It Expresses The Deepest Thoughts Of Life.

To Be Alone Is The Fate Of All Great Minds—a Fate Deplored At Times, But Still Always Chosen As The Less Grievous Of Two Evils.

The Cause Of Laughter Is Simply The Sudden Perception Of The Incongruity Between A Concept And The Real Project.

That A God Like Jehovah Should Have Created This World Of Misery And Woe, Out Of Pure Caprice, And Because He Enjoyed Doing It, And Should Then Have Clapped His Hands In Praise Of His Own Work, And Declared Everything To Be Very Good-that Will Not Do At All!

Faith Is Like Love, It Cannot Be Forced. Therefore It Is A Dangerous Operation If An Attempt Be Made To Introduce Or Bind It By State Regulations; For, As The Attempt To Force Love Begets Hatred, So Also To Compel Religious Belief Produces Rank Unbelief.

The Intellectual Attainments Of A Man Who Thinks For Himself Resemble A Fine Painting, Where The Light And Shade Are Correct, The Tone Sustained, The Colour Perfectly Hamonized; It Is True To Life.

A Man May Call To Mind The Face Of His Friend, But Not His Own. Here, Then, Is An Initial Difficulty In The Way Of Applying The Maxim, Know Thyself.

A Man Of Business Will Often Deceive You Without The Slightest Scruple, But He Will Absolutely Refuse To Commit A Theft.

The Alchemists In Their Search For Gold Discovered Many Other Things Of Greater Value.

How Very Paltry And Limited The Normal Human Intellect Is, And How Little Lucidity There Is In The Human Consciousness, May Be Judged From The Fact That, Despite The Ephemeral Brevity Of Human Life, The Uncertainty Of Our Existence And The Countless Enigmas Which Press Upon Us From All Sides, Everyone Does Not Continually And Ceaselessly Philosophize, But That Only The Rarest Of Exceptions Do.

Because Christian Morality Leaves Animals Out Of Account, They Are At Once Outlawed In Philosophical Morals; They Are Mere 'things,' Mere Means To Any Ends Whatsoever. They Can Therefore Be Used For Vivisection, Hunting, Coursing, Bullfights, And Horse Racing, And Can Be Whipped To Death As They Struggle Along With Heavy Carts Of Stone. Shame On Such A Morality That Is Worthy Of Pariahs, And That Fails To Recognize The Eternal Essence That Exists In Every Living Thing, And Shines Forth With Inscrutable Significance From All Eyes That See The Sun!

The Mother Of Useful Arts Is Necessity; That Of The Fine Arts Is Luxury. For Father The Former Has Intellect; The Latter Genius, Which Itself Is A Kind Of Luxury.

Means At Our Disposal Should Be Regarded As A Bulwark Against The Many Evils And Misfortunes That Can Occur. We Should Not Regard Such Wealth As A Permission Or Even An Obligation To Procure For Ourselves The Pleasures Of The World.

In Our Early Youth We Sit Before The Life That Lies Ahead Of Us Like Children Sitting Before The Curtain In A Theatre, In Happy And Tense Anticipation Of Whatever Is Going To Appear. Luckily We Do Not Know What Really Will Appear.

Human Life, Like All Inferior Goods, Is Covered On The Outside With A False Glitter; What Suffers Always Conceals Itself.

Life Is Full Of Troubles And Vexations, That One Must Either Rise Above It By Means Of Corrected Thoughts, Or Leave It.

Always To See The General In The Particular Is The Very Foundation Of Genius.

The Wise Have Always Said The Same Things, And Fools, Who Are The Majority Have Always Done Just The Opposite.

There Are 80,000 Prostitutes In London Alone And What Are They, If Not Bloody Sacrifices On The Altar Of Monogamy?

Reading Is Merely A Surrogate For Thinking For Yourself; It Means Letting Someone Else Direct Your Thoughts. Many Books, Moreover, Serve Merely To Show How Many Ways There Are Of Being Wrong, And How Far Astray You Yourself Would Go If You Followed Their Guidance. You Should Read Only When Your Own Thoughts Dry Up, Which Will Of Course Happen Frequently Enough Even To The Best Heads; But To Banish Your Own Thoughts So As To Take Up A Book Is A Sin Against The Holy Ghost; It Is Like Deserting Untrammeled Nature To Look At A Herbarium Or Engravings Of Landscapes.

Compassion For Animals Is Intimately Associated With Goodness Of Character, And It May Be Confidently Asserted That He Who Is Cruel To Animals Cannot Be A Good Man.

If People Insist That Honor Is Dearer Than Life Itself, What They Really Mean Is That Existence And Well-being Are As Nothing Compared With Other People's Opinions. Of Course, This May Be Only An Exaggerated Way Of Stating The Prosaic Truth That Reputation, That Is, The Opinion Others Have Of Us, Is Indispensable If We Are To Make Any Progress In The World.

Happiness Of Any Given Life Is To Be Measured, Not By Its Joys And Pleasures, But By The Extent To Which It Has Been Free From Suffering-from Positive Evil.

National Character Is Only Another Name For The Particular Form Which The Littleness, Perversity And Baseness Of Mankind Take In Every Country. Every Nation Mocks At Other Nations, And All Are Right.

Style Is What Gives Value And Currency To Thoughts.

Style Is The Physiognomy Of The Mind. It Is More Infallible Than That Of The Body. To Imitate The Style Of Another Is Said To Be Wearing A Mask. However Beautiful It May Be, It Is Through Its Lifelessness Insipid And Intolerable, So That Even The Most Ugly Living Face Is More Engaging.

Intellect Is A Magnitude Of Intensity, Not A Magnitude Of Extensity.

That The Outer Man Is A Picture Of The Inner, And The Face An Expression And Revelation Of The Whole Character, Is A Presumption Likely Enough In Itself, And Therefore A Safe One To Go On; Borne Out As It Is By The Fact That People Are Always Anxious To See Anyone Who Has Made Himself Famous. Photography Offers The Most Complete Satisfaction Of Our Curiosity.

Newspapers Are The Second Hand Of History. This Hand, However, Is Usually Not Only Of Inferior Metal To The Other Hands, It Also Seldom Works Properly.

Will Without Intellect Is The Most Vulgar And Common Thing In The World, Possessed By Every Blockhead, Who, In The Gratification Of His Passions, Shows The Stuff Of Which He Is Made.

Das Ganze Der Erfahrung Gleicht Einer Geheimschrift Und Die Philosophie Der Entzifferung Derselben. The Whole Of Experience Is Like A Cryptograph, And Philosophy Is Like The Deciphering Of It.

It Is Difficult To Keep Quiet If You Have Nothing To Do

Men Are By Nature Merely Indifferent To One Another; But Women Are By Nature Enemies.

For The Purpose Of Acquiring Gain, Everything Else Is Pushed Aside Or Thrown Overboard, For Example, As Is Philosophy By The Professors Of Philosophy.

Education Perverts The Mind Since We Are Directly Opposing The Natural Development Of Our Mind By Obtaining Ideas First And Observations Last. This Is Why So Few Men Of Learning Have Such Sound Common Sense As Is Quite Common Among The Illiterate.

The Reason Domestic Pets Are So Lovable And So Helpful To Us Is Because They Enjoy, Quietly And Placidly, The Present Moment.

In Youth It Is The Outward Aspect Of Things That Most Engages Us; While In Age, Thought Or Reflection Is The Predominating Qualityof The Mind. Hence, Youth Is The Time For Poetry, And Age Is More Inclined To Philosophy. In Practical Affairs It Is The Same: A Man Shapes His Resolutions In Youth More By The Impression That The Outward World Makes Upon Him; Whereas, When He Is Old, It Is Thought That Determines His Actions.

Mensch Kann Tun Was Er Will; Er Kann Aber Nicht Wollen Was Er Will. (one Can Choose What To Do, But Not What To Want.)

The Fundament Upon Which All Our Knowledge And Learning Rests Is The Inexplicable.

Faith Is Like Love: It Does Not Let Itself Be Forced.

A Man Can Surely Do What He Wills To Do, But Cannot Determine What He Wills.

Reading Is A Mere Makeshift For Original Thinking.

The Happiness Which We Receive From Ourselves Is Greater Than That Which We Obtain From Our Surroundings. . . . The World In Which A Person Lives Shapes Itself Chiefly By The Way In Which He Or She Looks At It.

Human Life Must Be Some Form Of Mistake.

The Memory Should Be Specially Taxed In Youth, Since It Is Then That It Is Strongest And Most Tenacious. But In Choosing The Things That Should Be Committed To Memory The Utmost Are And Forethought Must Be Exercised; As Lessons Well Learnt In Youth Are Never Forgotten.

In Action A Great Heart Is The Chief Qualification. In Work, A Great Head.

People Of Wealth And The So Called Upper Class Suffer The Most From Boredom.

Consciousness Makes The Individual Careful To Maintain His Own Existence; And If This Were Not So, There Would Be No Surety For The Preservation Of The Species. From All This It Is Clear That Individuality Is Not A Form Of Perfection, But Rather A Limitation; And So To Be Freed From It Is Not Loss But Gain.

Every Man Takes The Limits Of His Own Field Of Vision For The Limits Of The World.

If A Man Sets Out To Hate All The Miserable Creatures He Meets, He Will Not Have Much Energy Left For Anything Else; Whereas He Can Despise Them, One And All, With The Greatest Ease.

It Is Only A Man's Own Fundamental Thoughts That Have Truth And Life In Them.

Our First Ideas Of Life Are Generally Taken From Fiction Rather Than Fact.

Indeed, Intolerance Is Essential Only To Monotheism; An Only God Is By Nature A Jealous God Who Will Not Allow Another To Live. On The Other Hand, Polytheistic Gods Are Naturally Tolerant, They Live And Let Live.

Virtue Is As Little To Be Acquired By Learning As Genius; Nay, The Idea Is Barren, And Is Only To Be Employed As An Instrument, In The Same Way As Genius In Respect To Art. It Would Be As Foolish To Expect That Our Moral And Ethical Systems Would Turn Out Virtuous, Noble, And Holy Beings, As That Our Aesthetic Systems Would Produce Poets, Painters, And Musicians.

A Man Can Be Himself Only So Long As He Is Alone.

Religions Are Like Fireflies. They Require Darkness In Order To Shine.

There Is Only One Healing Force, And That Is Nature; In Pills And Ointments There Is None. At Most They Can Give The Healing Force Of Nature A Hint About Where There Is Something For It To Do.

After Your Death You Will Be What You Were Before Your Birth.

The Vanity Of Existence Is Revealed In The Whole Form Existence Assumes: In The Infiniteness Of Time And Space Contrasted With The Finiteness Of The Individual In Both; In The Fleeting Present As The Sole Form In Which Actuality Exists; In The Contingency And Relativity Of All Things; In Continual Becoming Without Being; In Continual Desire Without Satisfaction; In The Continual Frustration Of Striving Of Which Life Consists. . . Time Is That By Virtue Of Which Everything Becomes Nothingness In Our Hands And Loses All Real Value.

We Should Comfort Ourselves With The Masterpieces Of Art As With Exalted Personages-stand Quietly Before Them And Wait Till They Speak To Us.

Whatever Folly Men Commit, Be Their Shortcomings Or Their Vices What They May, Let Us Exercise Forbearance; Remember That When These Faults Appear In Others It Is Our Follies And Vices That We Behold.

Rascals Are Always Sociable, More's The Pity! And The Chief Sign That A Man Has Any Nobility In His Character Is The Little Pleasure He Takes In Others' Company.

Just As A Stream Flows Smoothly On As Long As It Encounters No Obstruction, So The Nature Of Man And Animal Is Such That We Never Really Notice Or Become Conscious Of What Is Agreeable To Our Will; If We Are To Notice Something, Our Will Has To Have Been Thwarted, Has To Have Experienced A Shock Of Some Kind.

Every Child Is In A Way A Genius; And Every Genius Is In A Way A Child.

Pantheism Is Only A Polite Form Of Atheism.

Do Not Shorten The Morning By Getting Up Late, Or Waste It In Unworthy Occupations Or In Talk; Look Upon It As The Quintessence Of Life, As To A Certain Extent Sacred. Evening Is Like Old Age: We Are Languid, Talkative, Silly. Each Day Is A Little Life: Every Waking And Rising A Little Birth, Every Fresh Morning A Little Youth, Every Going To Rest And Sleep A Little Death.

Marrying Means, To Grasp Blindfolded Into A Sack Hoping To Find Out An Eel Out Of An Assembly Of Snakes.

You Are Free To Do What You Want, But You Are Not Free To Want What You Want.

Hence, In All Countries The Chief Occupation Of Society Is Card-playing, And It Is The Gauge Of Its Value, And An Outward Sign That It Is Bankrupt In Thought. Because People Have No Thoughts To Deal In, They Deal Cards, And Try And Win One Another’s Money. Idiots!

That Human Life Must Be Some Kind Of Mistake Is Sufficiently Proved By The Simple Observation That Man Is A Compound Of Needs Which Are Hard To Satisfy; That Their Satisfaction Achieves Nothing But A Painless Condition In Which He Is Only Given Over To Boredom . . .

To Overcome Difficulties Is To Experience The Full Delight Of Existence.

A Man Never Is Happy, But Spends His Whole Life In Striving After Something Which He Thinks Will Make Him So; He Seldom Attains His Goal, And When He Does, It Is Only To Be Disappointed; He Is Mostly Shipwrecked In The End, And Comes Into Harbor With Mast And Rigging Gone. And Then, It Is All One Whether He Has Been Happy Or Miserable; For His Life Was Never Anything More Than A Present Moment Always Vanishing; And Now It Is Over.

Every State Of Welfare, Every Feeling Of Satisfaction, Is Negative In Its Character; That Is To Say, It Consists In Freedom From Pain, Which Is The Positive Element Of Existence.

Journalists Are Like Dogs, When Ever Anything Moves They Begin To Bark.

Honor Has Not To Be Won; It Must Only Not Be Lost.

Reason Is Feminine In Nature; It Can Only Give After It Has Received.

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 The World To Which Every Man Has A More Unassailable Title Than To His Own Life And Person.

The Deep Pain That Is Felt At The Death Of Every Friendly Soul Arises From The Feeling That There Is In Every Individual Something Which Is Inexpressible, Peculiar To Him Alone, And Is, Therefore, Absolutely And Irretrievably Lost.

The Charlatan Takes Very Different Shapes According To Circumstances; But At Bottom He Is A Man Who Cares Nothing About Knowledge For Its Own Sake, And Only Strives To Gain The Semblance Of It That He May Use It For His Own Personal Ends, Which Are Always Selfish And Material.

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.

The Little Incidents And Accidents Of Every Day Fill Us With Emotion, Anxiety, Annoyance, Passion, As Long As They Are Close To Us, When They Appear So Big, So Important, So Serious; But As Soon As They Are Borne Down The Restless Stream Of Time They Lose What Significance They Had; We Think No More Of Them And Soon Forget Them Altogether. They Were Big Only Because They Were Near.

Authority And Example Lead The World.

Console Yourself By Remembering That The World Doesn't Deserve Your Affection.

For An Author To Write As He Speaks Is Just As Reprehensible As The Opposite Fault, To Speak As He Writes; For This Gives A Pedantic Effect To What He Says, And At The Same Time Makes Him Hardly Intelligible.

The First Forty Years Of Life Give Us The Text; The Next Thirty Supply The Commentary On It.

Men Are A Thousand Times More Intent On Becoming Rich Than On Acquiring Culture, Though It Is Quite Certain That What A Man Is Contributes More To His Happiness Than What He Has.

The Person Who Writes For Fools Is Always Sure Of A Large Audience.

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.

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Eduardo Galeano

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