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To Be Shocked At How Deeply Rejection Hurts Is To Ignore What Acceptance Involves. We Must Never Allow Our Suffering To Be Compounded By Suggestions That There Is Something Odd In Suffering So Deeply. There Would Be Something Amiss If We Didn't.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
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To Be Shocked At

Arthur Schopenhauer
To Be Shocked At How Deeply Rejection Hurts Is To Ignore What Acceptance Involves. We Must Never Allow Our Suffering To Be Compounded By Suggestions That There Is Something Odd In Suffering So Deeply. There Would Be Something Amiss If We Didn't.
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Hurt
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Two Chinamen Visiting Europe Went To The Theatre For The First Time. One Of Them Occupied Himself With Trying To Understand The Theatrical Machinery, Which He Succeeded In Doing. The Other, Despite His Ignorance Of The Language, Sought To Unravel The Meaning Of The Play. The Former Is Like The Astronomer, The Latter The Philosopher.
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It Is Difficult, If Not Impossible, To Define The Limit Of Our Reasonable Desires In Respect Of Possessions.
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Book
Thinking
Buying
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Difficulty
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Birthday
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Giving
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Philosophical
Heart
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Pain
Blessing
Swings
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.
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Errors
Age
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Life
Good Morning
Death
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Hands
People
Solitude
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Struggle
Majority
Lasts
In The Sphere Of Thought, Absurdity And Perversity Remain The Masters Of The World, And Their Dominion Is Suspended Only For Brief Periods.
Sad
World
Dominion
Man Shows His Character Best In Trifles.
Character
Men
Trifles
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Facts
Pessimist
Optimist
Men Are By Nature Merely Indifferent To One Another; But Women Are By Nature Enemies.
Strong Women
Philosophical
Enemy
Many Books 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.
Book
Dry Up
Way
If We Suspect That A Man Is Lying, We Should Pretend To Believe Him; For Then He Becomes Bold And Assured, Lies More Vigorously, And Is Unmasked.
Lying
Believe
Men
The Fly Ought To Be Used As The Symbol Of Impertinence And Audacity; For Whilst All Other Animals Shun Man More Than Anything Else, And Run Away Even Before He Comes Near Them, The Fly Lights Upon His Very Nose.
Running
Animal
Men
For The World Is Hell, And Men Are On The One Hand The Tormented Souls And On The Other The Devils In It.
Men
Hands
Soul
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Hands
People
Achievement
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.
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Doctors
Soldier
A High Degree Of Intellect Tends To Make A Man Unsocial.
Men
Degrees
Intellect
Do Not Shorten The Morning By Getting Up Late; Look Upon It As The Quintessence Of Life, As To A Certain Extent Sacred.
Life
Morning
Looks
If Anyone Spends Almost The Whole Day In Reading...he Gradually Loses The Capacity For Thinking...this Is The Case With Many Learned Persons; They Have Read Themselves Stupid
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Reading
Thinking
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Individuality
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Mind
Pleasure
Lasting
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Solitude
Mind
Bears
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Watches
Letters
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Motivation
Compassion
Effort
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Finding Happiness
Impossible
Difficult
Night Gives A Black Look To Everything, Whatever It May Be.
Night
Giving
Black
That Arithmetic Is The Basest Of All Mental Activities Is Proved By The Fact That It Is The Only One That Can Be Accomplished By A Machine.
Machines
Facts
Arithmetic
There Is No Absurdity So Palpable But That It May Be Firmly Planted In The Human Head If You Only Begin To Inculcate It Before The Age Of Five, By Constantly Repeating It With An Air Of Great Solemnity.
Fear
Educational
Air
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.
Children
Math
Maturity
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.
Art
Ideas
Musician
Life Is A Task To Be Done. It Is A Fine Thing To Say Defunctus Est; It Means That The Man Has Done His Task.
Life
Mean
Men
Still, Instead Of Trusting What Their Own Minds Tell Them, Men Have As A Rule A Weakness For Trusting Others Who Pretend To Supernatural Sources Of Knowledge.
Men
Mind
Weakness
Because People Have No Thoughts To Deal In, They Deal Cards, And Try And Win One Another's Money. Idiots!
Money
Philosophical
Winning
Great Minds Are Related To The Brief Span Of Time During Which They Live As Great Buildings Are To A Little Square In Which They Stand: You Cannot See Them In All Their Magnitude Because You Are Standing Too Close To Them.
Time
Squares
Mind
What A Man Is: That Is To Say, Personality, In The Widest Sense Of The Word; Under Which Are Included Health, Strength, Beauty, Temperament, Moral Character, Intelligence, And Education.
Character
Men
Personality
Every Original Idea Is First Ridiculed, Then Vigorously Attacked, And Finally Taken For Granted.
Taken
Ideas
Firsts
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.
Strong
Men
Two
Every Satisfaction He Attains Lays The Seeds Of Some New Desire, So That There Is No End To The Wishes Of Each Individual Will.
Wish
Desire
Satisfaction
History Is The Long, Difficult And Confused Dream Of Mankind.
Dream
Confused
Long
Vedas Are The Most Rewarding And The Most Elevating Book Which Can Be Possible In The World.
Book
Vedas
India
A Word Too Much Always Defeats Its Purpose.
Purpose
Too Much
Defeat
Every Genius Is A Great Child; He Gazes Out At The World As Something Strange, A Spectacle, And Therefore With Purely Objective Interest
Children
World
Genius
The Greatest Achievements Of The Human Mind Are Generally Received With Distrust.
Philosophical
Not Giving Up
Never Giving Up
Mostly It Is Loss Which Teaches Us About The Worth Of Things.
Death
Loss
Teach
The Life Of Every Individual Is Really Always A Tragedy, But Gone Through In Detail, It Has The Character Of A Comedy.
Character
Tragedy
Details
Monotheistic Religions Alone Furnish The Spectacle Of Religious Wars, Religious Persecutions, Heretical Tribunals, That Breaking Of Idols And Destruction Of Images Of The Gods, That Razing Of Indian Temples And Egyptian Colossi, Which Had Looked On The Sun 3,000 Years: Just Because A Jealous God Had Said, Thou Shalt Make No Graven Image.
Religious
War
Jealous
The Beard, Being A Half-mask, Should Be Forbidden By The Police - It Is, Moreover, As A Sexual Symbol In The Middle Of The Face, Obscene: That Is Why It Pleases Women.
Police
Half
Beard
Patriotism Is The Passion Of Fools And The Most Foolish Of Passions.
Passion
Fool
Foolish
Astrology Furnishes A Splendid Proof Of The Contemptible Subjectivity Of Men In Consequence Whereof They Refer Everything To Themselves And From Every Idea At Once Go Straight Back To Themselves. Astrology Refers The Course Of Celestial Bodies To The Miserable Ego; It Also Establishes A Connection Between The Comets In Heaven And The Squabbles And Rascalities On Earth.
Men
Astrology
Heaven
Men Are The Devils Of The Earth, And The Animals Are Its Tormented Souls.
Animal
Men
Compassion
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.
Mean
People
Honor
Mankind Cannot Get On Without A Certain Amount Of Absurdity.
Certain
Mankind
Absurdity
Life Is A Language In Which Certain Truths Are Conveyed To Us; If We Could Learn Them In Some Other Way, We Should Not Live.
True Life
Way
Language
If A Man Wants To Read Good Books, He Must Make A Point Of Avoiding Bad Ones; For Life Is Short, And Time And Energy Limited.
Book
Life Is Short
Men
Every Parting Gives A Foretaste Of Death; Every Remeeting A Foretaste Of The Resurrection. That Is Why Even People Who Are Indifferent To Each Other Rejoice So Much If They Meet Again After Twenty Or Thirty Years Of Separation.
Years
People
Giving
Everything That Happens, Happens Of Necessity.
Happens
Freedom Of The Press Is To The Machinery Of The State What The Safety Valve Is To The Steam Engine.
Safety
Evil
Steam Engines
The Auspices For Philosophy Are Bad If, When Proceeding Ostensibly On The Investigation Of Truth, We Start Saying Farewell To All Uprightness, Honesty And Sincerity, And Are Intent Only On Passing Ourselves Off For What We Are Not. We Then Assume, Like Those Three Sophists [fichte, Schelling And Hegel], First A False Pathos, Then An Affected And Lofty Earnestness, Then An Air Of Infinite Superiority, In Order To Impose Where We Despair Of Ever Being Able To Convince.
Honesty
Philosophy
Farewell
Empirical Sciences Prosecuted Purely For Their Own Sake, And Without Philosophic Tendency Are Like A Face Without Eyes.
Philosophy
Eye
Science
It Is Most Important To Allow The Brain The Full Measure Of Sleep Which Is Required To Restore It; For Sleep Is To A Man's Whole Nature What Winding Up Is To A Clock.
Sleep
Men
Clock
The Law Of Simplicity And Naïveté Applies To All Fine Art, For It Is Compatible With What Is Most Sublime.
Art
Law
Simplicity
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?
Moving
Suffering
Action
Gaiety Alone, As It Were, Is The Hard Cash Of Happiness; Everything Else Is Just A Promissory Note.
Happiness And Love
Cash
Notes
I Have Described Religion As The Metaphysics Of The People.
People
Metaphysics
Satisfaction Consists In Freedom From Pain, Which Is The Positive Element Of Life.
Positive
Pain
Philosophical
There Are Two Things Which Make It Impossible To Believe That This World Is The Successful Work Of An All-wise, All-good, And At The Same Time, All-powerful Being; Firstly, The Misery Which Abounds In It Everywhere; And Secondly, The Obvious Imperfection Of Its Highest Product, Man, Who Is A Burlesque Of What He Should Be.
Wise
Atheist
Powerful
A Man Of Genius Can Hardly Be Sociable, For What Dialogues Could Indeed Be So Intelligent And Entertaining As His Own Monologues?
Intelligent
Men
Genius
Sleep Is The Interest We Have To Pay On The Capital Which Is Called In At Death; And The Higher The Rate Of Interest And The More Regularly It Is Paid, The Further The Date Of Redemption Is Postponed.
Sleep
Insomnia
Redemption
The Little Honesty That Exists Among Authors Is Discernible In The Unconscionable Way They Misquote From The Writings Of Others.
Honesty
Writing
Littles
For What Is Modesty But Hypocritical Humility, By Means Of Which, In A World Swelling With Vile Envy, A Man Seeks To Beg Pardon For His Excellences And Merits From Those Who Have None? For Whoever Attributes No Merit To Himself Because He Really Has None Is Not Modest, But Merely Honest.
Mean
Humility
Men
If We Were Not All So Interested In Ourselves, Life Would Be So Uninteresting That None Of Us Would Be Able To Endure It.
Selfish People
Psychology
Selfishness
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.
Philosophy
Men
Reflection
To Free A Person From Error Is To Give, And Not To Take Away.
Teaching
Philosophical
Learning
There Is Not A Grain Of Dust, Not An Atom That Can Become Nothing, Yet Man Believes That Death Is The Annhilation Of His Being.
Death
Believe
Men
It Is Not What Things Are Objectively And In Themselves, But What They Are For Us, In Our Way Of Looking At Them, That Makes Us Happy Or The Reverse.
Way
Reverse
If There Is Anything In The World That Can Really Be Called A Man's Property, It Is Surely That Which Is The Result Of His Mental Activity.
Independence
World
Results
Every Man Takes The Limits Of His Own Field Of Vision For The Limits Of The World.
Inspirational
Science
Men
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
Pain
Animal
Agony
The Fourfold Root Of The Principle Of Sufficent Reason Is "anything Perceived Has A Cause. All Conclusions Have Premises. All Effects Have Causes. All Actions Have Motives.
Roots
Principles
Causes
The Tallest Oak Tree Once Was An Acorn That Any Pig Could Have Swallowed.
Life
Pigs
Tree
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.
Inspirational
Being Yourself
Freedom
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.
Book
Men
Race
One Should Use Common Words To Say Uncommon Things
Writing
Use
Common
A Writer Should Never Be Brief At The Expense Of Being Clear.
Writing
Should
Clear
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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