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To Read A Book Is To Hold An Entire World In The Palm Of Your Hand. That World Is Unique To You; No Two Readers Can Ever Inhabit The Same World
-Arthur Schopenhauer
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To Read A Book

Arthur Schopenhauer
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To Read A Book Is To Hold An Entire World In The Palm Of Your Hand. That World Is Unique To You; No Two Readers Can Ever Inhabit The Same World

Understanding the Quote: "to read a book is to hold an entire world in the..."

This quote by Arthur Schopenhauer reflects deeply on the theme of book. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Book, Unique, Hands, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Arthur Schopenhauer interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer is celebrated for insightful thoughts on book and unique. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Book
Unique
Hands
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Every Human Perfection Is Linked To An Error Which It Threatens To Turn Into
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The Best Consolation In Misfortune Or Affliction Of Any Kind Will Be The Thought Of Other People Who Are In A Still Worse Plight Than Yourself; And This Is A Form Of Consolation Open To Every One. But What An Awful Fate This Means For Mankind As A Whole! We Are Like Lambs In A Field, Disporting Themselves Under The Eye Of The Butcher, Who Chooses Out First One And Then Another For His Prey.
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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.
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As The Biggest Library If It Is In Disorder Is Not As Useful As A Small But Well-arranged One, So You May Accumulate A Vast Amount Of Knowledge But It Will Be Of Far Less Value Than A Much Smaller Amount If You Have Not Thought It Over For Yourself.
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As My Own Father Was Sick, And Miserably Tied To His Invalid's Chair, He Would Have Been Abandoned Had Not An Old Servant Performed For Him A So-called Service Of Love. My Mother Gave Parties While He Was Perishing In Solitude, And Amused Herself While He Was Suffering Bitter Agonies
Mother
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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.
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For Our Improvement We Need A Mirror.
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I Have Described Religion As The Metaphysics Of The People.
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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.
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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.
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Every New Born Being Indeed Comes Fresh And Blithe Into The New Existence, And Enjoys It As A Free Gift: But There Is, And Can Be, Nothing Freely Given. It's Fresh Existence Is Paid For By The Old Age And Death Of A Worn Out Existence Which Has Perished, But Which Contained The Indestructible Seed Out Of Which The New Existence Has Arisen: They Are One Being.
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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.
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Marrying Means Doing Whatever Possible To Become Repulsed Of Each Other
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One Can Forget Everything, Everything, Only Not Oneself, One's Own Being.
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There Are 80,000 Prostitutes In London Alone And What Are They, If Not Bloody Sacrifices On The Altar Of Monogamy?
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A Man Of Business Will Often Deceive You Without The Slightest Scruple, But He Will Absolutely Refuse To Commit A Theft.
Business
Men
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It Often Happens That We Blurt Out Things That May In Some Kind Of Way Be Harmful To Us, But We Are Silent About Things That May Make Us Look Ridiculous; Because In This Case Effect Follows Very Quickly On Cause.
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Mostly The Loss Teaches Us Only About The Value Of Things.
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[t]he Moralists Of Europe [have] Pretended That Beasts Have No Rights... A Doctrine Revolting/gross/barbarous... On Which A Native Of The Asiatic Uplands Could Not Look Without Righteous Horror.
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When You Look Back On Your Life, It Looks As Though It Were A Plot, But When You Are Into It, It's A Mess: Just One Surprise After Another. Then, Later, You See It Was Perfect.
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Looks
In Action A Great Heart Is The Chief Qualification. In Work, A Great Head.
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Life Is Short And Truth Works Far And Lives Long: Let Us Speak The Truth.
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Martyrdom Is The Only Way A Man Can Become Famous Without Ability.
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The Principle Of Contradiction Establishes Merely The Agreement Of Concepts, But Does Not Itself Produce Concepts.
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To Gain Anything We Have Longed For Is Only To Discover How Vain And Empty It Is; And Even Though We Are Always Living In Expectation Of Better Things, At The Same Time We Often Repent And Long To Have The Past Back Again.
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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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Boredom Is An Evil That Is Not To Be Estimated Lightly. It Can Come In The End To Real Despair. The Public Authority Takes Precautions Against It Everywhere, As Against Other Universal Calamities.
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When A Man Has Reached A Condition In Which He Believes That A Thing Must Happen Because He Does Not Wish It, And That What He Wishes To Happen Never Will Be, This Is Really The State Called Desperation.
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To Form A Judgment Intuitively Is The Privilege Of Few; Authority And Example Lead The Rest Of The World. They See With The Eyes Of Others, They Hear With The Ears Of Others. Therefore It Is Very Easy To Think As All The World Now Think; But To Think As All The World Will Think Thirty Years Hence Is Not In The Power Of Every One.
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Human Life Must Be Some Form Of Mistake.
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The Greatest Achievements Of The Human Mind Are Generally Received With Distrust.
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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.
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It Is A Clumsy Experiment To Make; For It Involves The Destruction Of The Very Consciousness Which Puts The Question And Awaits The Answer.
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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.
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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.
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There Is No More Mistaken Path To Happiness Than Worldliness, Revelry, High Life.
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The Ultimate Foundation Of Honor Is The Conviction That Moral Character Is Unalterable: A Single Bad Action Implies That Future Actions Of The Same Kind Will, Under Similar Circumstances, Also Be Bad.
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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.
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No Greater Mistake Can Be Made Than To Imagine That What Has Been Written Latest Is Always The More Correct; That What Is Written Later On Is An Improvement On What Was Written Previously; And That Every Change Means Progress.
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What People Commonly Call Fate Is Mostly Their Own Stupidity.
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A Good Supply Of Resignation Is Of The First Importance In Providing For The Journey Of Life.
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A Man Can Surely Do What He Wills To Do, But Cannot Determine What He Wills.
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Although As A Rule The Absurd Culminates, And It Seems Impossible For The Voice Of The Individual Ever To Penetrate Through The Chorus Of Foolers And Fooled, Still There Is Left To The Genuine Works Of All Times A Quite Peculiar, Silent, Slow, And Powerful Influence; And As If By A Miracle, We See Them Rise At Last Out Of The Turmoil Like A Balloon That Floats Up Out Of The Thick Atmosphere Of This Globe Into Purer Regions. Having Once Arrived There, It Remains At Rest, And No One Can Any Longer Draw It Down Again.
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In Their Hearts Women Think That It Is Men's Business To Earn Money And Theirs To Spend It.
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The Faculty For Remembering Is Not Diminished In Proportion To What One Has Learnt, Just As Little As The Number Of Moulds In Which You Cast Sand Lessens Its Capacity For Being Cast In New Moulds.
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The First Forty Years Of Our Life Give The Text, The Next Thirty Furnish The Commentary Upon It, Which Enables Us Rightly To Understand The True Meaning And Connection Of The Text With Its Moral And Its Beauties.
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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.
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What People Commonly Call Fate Is, As A General Rule, Nothing But Their Own Stupid And Foolish Conduct.
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Ignorance Is Degrading Only When Found In Company With Great Riches.
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Apart From Man, No Being Wonders At Its Own Experience.
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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.
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Friends And Acquaintances Are The Surest Passport To Fortune.
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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.
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The Man Never Feels The Want Of What It Never Occurs To Him To Ask For.
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Men Are By Nature Merely Indifferent To One Another; But Women Are By Nature Enemies.
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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.
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Style Is What Gives Value And Currency To Thoughts.
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Writers May Be Classified As Meteors, Planets, And Fixed Stars.
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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.
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Truth That Is Naked Is The Most Beautiful, And The Simpler Its Expression The Deeper Is The Impression It Makes; This Is Partly Because It Gets Unobstructed Hold Of The Hearer’s Mind Without His Being Distracted By Secondary Thoughts, And Partly Because He Feels That Here He Is Not Being Corrupted Or Deceived By The Arts Of Rhetoric, But That The Whole Effect Is Got From The Thing Itself.
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You Must Treat A Work Of Art Like A Great Man: Stand Before It And Wait Patiently Till It Deigns To Speak.
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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.
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In Many Cases Hate A Person Is Rooted In The Involuntary Estimate Of Its Virtues.
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I Have Not Yet Spoken My Last Word About Women. I Believe That If A Woman Succeeds In Withdrawing From The Mass, Or Rather Raising Herself From Above The Mass, She Grows Ceaselessly And More Than A Man.
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To Repeat Abstractly, Universally, And Distinctly In Concepts The Whole Inner Nature Of The World , And Thus To Deposit It As A Reflected Image In Permanent Concepts Always Ready For The Faculty Of Reason , This And Nothing Else Is Philosophy.
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The Truth Can Wait, For It Lives A Long Life.
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Reading Is Merely A Surrogate For Thinking For Yourself; It Means Letting Someone Else Direct Your Thoughts.
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What Disturbs And Depresses Young People Is The Hunt For Happiness On The Firm Assumption That It Must Be Met With In Life. From This Arises Constantly Deluded Hope And So Also Dissatisfaction. Deceptive Images Of A Vague Happiness Hover Before Us In Our Dreams, And We Search In Vain For Their Original. Much Would Have Been Gained If, Through Timely Advice And Instruction, Young People Could Have Had Eradicated From Their Minds The Erroneous Notion That The World Has A Great Deal To Offer Them.
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On The Path Of Actions, Great Heart Is The Chief Recommendation; On That Works, A Great Head.
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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.
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For It Is A Matter Of Daily Observation That People Take The Greatest Pleasure In That Which Satisfies Their Vanity; And Vanity Cannot Be Satisfied Without Comparison With Others.
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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.
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The Common Man Is Not Concerned About The Passage Of Time, The Man Of Talent Is Driven By It.
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In Early Youth, As We Contemplate Our Coming Life, We Are Like Children In A Theatre Before The Curtain Is Raised, Sitting There In High Spirits And Eagerly Waiting For The Play To Begin. It Is A Blessing That We Do Not Know What Is Really Going To Happen. Could We Foresee It, There Are Times When Children Might Seem Like Innocent Prisoners, Condemned, Not To Death, But To Life, And As Yet All Unconscious Of What Their Sentence Means.
Children
Mean
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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
Hatred Is An Affair Of The Heart; Contempt That Of The Head.
Anger
Philosophical
Heart
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.
Independence
Foundation
Essentials
One Should Use Common Words To Say Uncommon Things
Writing
Use
Common
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.
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Power
Errors
Materialism Is The Philosophy Of The Subject Who Forgets To Take Account Of Himself.
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The Heavy Armor Becomes The Light Dress Of Childhood; The Pain Is Brief, The Joy Unending.
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Light
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He Who Can See Truly In The Midst Of General Infatuation Is Like A Man Whose Watch Keeps Good Time, When All Clocks In The Town In Which He Lives Are Wrong. He Alone Knows The Right Time; What Use Is That To Him?
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Use
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.
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Europe
Answers
I Believe A Person Of Any Fine Feeling Scarcely Ever Sees A New Face Without A Sensation Akin To A Shock, For The Reason That It Presents A New And Surprising Combination Of Unedifying Elements.
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Will Power Is To The Mind Like A Strong Blind Man Who Carries On His Shoulders A Lame Man Who Can See.
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Motivational
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A Man Of Talent Will Strive For Money And Reputation; But The Spring That Moves Genius To The Production Of Its Works Is Not As Easy To Name
Spring
Moving
Men
Console Yourself By Remembering That The World Doesn't Deserve Your Affection.
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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.
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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.
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Roots
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The Wise Have Always Said The Same Things, And Fools, Who Are The Majority Have Always Done Just The Opposite.
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Wisdom
Opposites
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!
Life
Eye
Equality
The World Is My Representation
World
Representation
Pantheism Is Only A Polite Form Of Atheism.
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Pantheism
Form
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.
Philosophy
Teaching
Character
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.
Reading
Book
Mean
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.
Pain
Believe
Animal
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
In Our Monogamous Part Of The World, To Marry Means To Halve One's Rights And Double One's Duties.
Marriage
Mean
Rights
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.
Men
Culture
Becoming
Human Existence Is An Error...it Is Bad Today And Every Day It Gets Worse, Until The Worst Happens.
Depressing
Errors
Today
A Sense Of Humour Is The Only Divine Quality Of Man
God
Funny Life
Men
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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Ignorance
Science
We Forfeit Three-quarters Of Ourselves In Order To Be Like Other People.
Inspirational
Philosophical
Knowledge
At Bottom, Every State Regards Another As A Gang Of Robbers Who Will Fall Upon It As Soon As There Is An Opportunity.
Fall
Opportunity
Politics
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.
Library
Research
Management
What A Man Can Do And Suffer Is Unknown To Himself Till Some Occasion Presents Itself Which Draws Out The Hidden Power. Just As One Sees Not In The Water Of An Unruffled Pond The Fury And Roar With Which It Can Dash Down A Steep Rock Without Injury To Itself, Or How High It Is Capable Of Rising; Or As Little As One Can Suspect The Latent Heat In Ice-cold Water.
Men
Ice
Rocks
It Is Only In The Microscope That Our Life Looks So Big.
Vision
Tools
Looks
Every Original Idea Is First Ridiculed, Then Vigorously Attacked, And Finally Taken For Granted.
Taken
Ideas
Firsts
[t]he Appropriate Form Of Address Between Man And Man Ought To Be, Not Monsieur, Sir, But Fellow Sufferer, Compagnon De Miseres.
Men
Addresses
Form
Music Is The Melody Whose Text Is The World.
Music
Wisdom
Philosophical
After Your Death You Will Be What You Were Before Your Birth.
Death
Suicide
Philosophical
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.
Writing
Opposites
Giving
The Difficulty Is To Try And Teach The Multitude That Something Can Be True And Untrue At The Same Time.
Education
Teacher
Trying
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
If At Times I Have Thought Myself Unfortunate, It Is Because Of A Confusion, An Error. I Have Mistaken Myself For Someone Else... Who Am I Really? I Am The Author Of The World As Will And Representation, I Am The One Who Has Given An Answer To The Mystery Of Being That Will Occupy The Thinkers Of Future Centuries. That Is What I Am, And Who Can Dispute It In The Years Of Life That Still Remain For Me?
Errors
Years
Confusion
All Our Wanting Comes From Needs, Thus We Continiously Suffer. The Intellect Teaches Free Will, Free From Suffering.
Suffering
Needs
Free Will
Pride Works _from Within_; It Is The Direct Appreciation Of Oneself. Vanity Is The Desire To Arrive At This Appreciation Indirectly, From Without.
Appreciation
Pride
Vanity
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.
Suicide
Nature
Suicidal
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.
Love
Religious
Hatred
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.
Hurt
Acceptance
Rejection
...nothing At All Rides On The Life Or Death Of The Individual.
Individual
Life Or Death
A Great Affliction Of All Philistines Is That Idealities Afford Them No Entertainment, But To Escape From Boredom They Are Always In Need Of Realities.
Reality
Boredom
Needs
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
The Scenes And Events Of Long Ago, And The Persons Who Took Part In Them, Wear A Charming Aspect To The Eye Of Memory, Which Sees Only The Outlines And Takes No Note Of Disagreeable Details. The Present Enjoys No Such Advantage, And So It Always Seems Defective.
Memories
Eye
Long Ago
We Should Comfort Ourselves With The Masterpieces Of Art As With Exalted Personages-stand Quietly Before Them And Wait Till They Speak To Us.
Art
Waiting
Comfort
To Read A Book Is To Hold An Entire World In The Palm Of Your Hand. That World Is Unique To You; No Two Readers Can Ever Inhabit The Same World
Book
Unique
Hands
For, As You Know, Religions Are Like Glow-worms; They Shine Only When It Is Dark.
Dark
Shining
Worms
Where There Is No Love, A Person's Faithfulness To The Marriage Bond Is Probably Against Nature.
Chemistry
Faithfulness
Persons
What Give All That Is Tragic, Whatever Its Form, The Characteristic Of The Sublime, Is The First Inkling Of The Knowledge That The World And Life Can Give No Satisfaction, And Are Not Worth Our Investment In Them. The Tragic Spirit Consists In This. Accordingly It Leads To Resignation.
Giving
Sublime
World
Intellect Is Invisible To The Man Who Has None.
War
Men
Pessimism
Honour Is External Conscience, And Conscience Is Inward Honour.
Inward
Honour
Conscience
First The Truth Is Ridiculed. Then It Meets Outrage. Then It Is Said To Have Been Obvious All Along.
Firsts
Truth Is
Outrage
Treat A Work Of Art Like A Prince. Let It Speak To You First.
Art
Work
Philosophical
Motives Are Causes Experienced From Within.
Causes
Motive
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
A Man's Delight In Looking Forward To And Hoping For Some Particular Satisfaction Is A Part Of The Pleasure Flowing Out Of It, Enjoyed In Advance. But This Is Afterward Deducted, For The More We Look Forward To Anything The Less We Enjoy It When It Comes.
Sad
Men
Looks
Mostly It Is Loss Which Teaches Us About The Worth Of Things.
Death
Loss
Teach
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
Stupid
Reading
Thinking
All Truth Passes Through Three Stages. First, It Is Ridiculed. Second, It Is Violently Opposed. Third, It Is Accepted As Being Self-evident.
Inspirational
Witty
Truth
Pride Is An Established Conviction Of One’s Own Paramount Worth In Some Particular Respect, While Vanity Is The Desire Of Rousing Such A Conviction In Others, And It Is Generally Accompanied By The Secret Hope Of Ultimately Coming To The Same Conviction Oneself. Pride Works From Within; It Is The Direct Appreciation Of Oneself. Vanity Is The Desire To Arrive At This Appreciation Indirectly, From Without.
Appreciation
Pride
Vanity
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
Whoever Heard Me Assert That The Grey Cat Playing Just Now In The Yard Is The Same One That Did Jumps And Tricks There Five Hundred Years Ago Will Think Whatever He Likes Of Me, But It Is A Stranger Form Of Madness To Imagine That The Present-day Cat Is Fundamentally An Entirely Different One.
Cat
Thinking
Years
The Man Who Sees Two Or Three Generations Is Like One Who Sits In The Conjuror's Booth At A Fair, And Sees The Same Tricks Two Or Three Times. They Are Meant To Be Seen Only Once.
Men
Two
Three
Most Men Are So Thoroughly Subjective That Nothing Really Interests Them But Themselves.
Men
Interest
Subjective
Night Gives A Black Look To Everything, Whatever It May Be.
Night
Giving
Black
Change Alone Is Eternal, Perpetual, Immortal.
Change
Growth
Eternal Love
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.
Character
Men
Littles
Every Child Is In A Way A Genius; And Every Genius Is In A Way A Child.
Children
Genius
Way
Imagination Is Strong In A Man When That Particular Function Of The Brain Which Enables Him To Observe Is Roused To Activity Without Any Necessary Excitement Of The Sense. Accordingly, We Find That Imagination Is Active Just In Proportion As Our Sense Are Not Excited By External Objects. A Long Period Of Solitude, Whether In Prison Or In A Sick Room; Quiet, Twilight, Darkness-these Are The Things That Promote Its Activity; And Under Their Influence It Comes Into Play Of Itself.
Strong
Twilight
Men
A Poet Or Philosopher Should Have No Fault To Find With His Age If It Only Permits Him To Do His Work Undisturbed In His Own Corner; Nor With His Fate If The Corner Granted Him Allows Of His Following His Vocation Without Having To Think About Other People.
Fate
Thinking
Should Have
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.
Men
Thinking
Goal
There Are Three Stages In The Revelation Of Truth. The First Is To Be Ridiculed, The Second Is To Be Resisted And The Third Is To Be Considered Self-evident.
Self
Three
Firsts
There Is Something In Us That Is Wiser Than Our Head.
Wiser
We Should Be Surprised That A Matter That Generally Plays Such An Important Part In The Life Of Man Has Hitherto Been Almost Entirely Disregarded By Philosophers, And Lies Before Us As Raw And Untreated Material.
Lying
Men
Play
A Writer Should Never Be Brief At The Expense Of Being Clear.
Writing
Should
Clear
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.
Sight
Order
Suffering
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.
Happiness
Way
Looks
Unrest Is The Mark Of Existence.
Unrest
Mark
Existence
The Person Who Writes For Fools Is Always Sure Of A Large Audience.
Funny
Writing
Humor
Solitude Will Be Welcomed Or Endured Or Avoided, According As A Man's Personal Value Is Large Or Small.
Men
Solitude
Personal Values
If I Maintain My Silence About My Secret It Is My Prisoner...if I Let It Slip From My Tongue, I Am Its Prisoner.
Gossip
Silence
Secret
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
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.
Two
Long
Innovation
The More Unintelligent A Man Is, The Less Mysterious Existence Seems To Him.
Life
Wisdom
Philosophical
To Feel Envy Is Human, To Savour Schadenfreude Is Devilish
Envy
Feels
Savour
The General History Of Art And Literature Shows That The Highest Achievements Of The Human Mind Are, As A Rule, Not Favourably Received At First.
Art
Achievement
Mind
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.
Women
Justice
Weakness
Reason Is Feminine In Nature; It Can Only Give After It Has Received.
Giving
Pessimism
Reason
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.
Hands
People
Intellectual
We Can Regard Our Life As A Uselessly Disturbing Episode In The Blissful Repose Of Nothingness.
Existentialism
Episodes
Regard
I Believe That When Death Closes Our Eyes We Shall Awaken To A Light, Of Which Our Sunlight Is But The Shadow.
Believe
Eye
Light
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.
Men
Thinking
Light
The Alchemists In Their Search For Gold Discovered Many Other Things Of Greater Value.
Philosophical
Science
Data
Man May Have The Most Excellent Judgment In All Other Matters, And Yet Go Wrong In Those Which Concern Himself; Because Here The Will Comes In And Deranges The Intellect At Once. Therefore Let A Man Take Counsel Of A Friend. A Doctor Can Cure Everyone But Himself; If He Falls Ill, He Sends For A Colleague.
Fall
Men
Doctors
Politeness Is To Human Nature What Warmth Is To Wax.
Positive
Philosophical
Entrepreneur
The Safest Way Of Not Being Very Miserable Is Not To Expect To Be Very Happy.
Happiness
Way
Miserable
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.)
Want
Vedas Are The Most Rewarding And The Most Elevating Book Which Can Be Possible In The World.
Book
Vedas
India
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.
Life
Powerful
Space
Happiness Consists In Frequent Repetition Of Pleasure
Happiness
Pleasure
Repetition
Reading Is Equivalent To Thinking With Someone Else's Head Instead Of With One's Own.
Philosophical
Reading
Thinking
Man Shows His Character Best In Trifles.
Character
Men
Trifles
Life Is A Business That Does Not Cover The Costs.
Doe
Cost
Life Is
It Is Only The Hope Of What Is Claimed That Begets And Nurishes The Wish.
Wish
Begets
It Is, Indeed, Only In Old Age That Intellectual Men Attain Their Sublime Expression, Whilst Portraits Of Them In Their Youth Show Only The First Traces Of It.
Men
Expression
Intellectual
The Word Of Man Is The Most Durable Of All Material.
Communication
Philosophical
Men
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.
Life
Good Morning
Death
This Is The Case With Many Learned Persons; They Have Read Themselves Stupid.
Stupid
Learned Person
Cases
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.
Art
Book
Reading
He Who Lives To See Two Or Three Generations Is Like A Man Who Sits Some Time In The Conjurer's Booth At A Fair, And Witnesses The Performance Twice Or Thrice In Succession. The Tricks Were Meant To Be Seen Only Once; And When They Are No Longer A Novelty And Cease To Deceive, Their Effect Is Gone.
Men
Two
Three
Dissimulation Is Innate In Woman, And Almost As Much A Quality Of The Stupid As Of The Clever.
Clever
Stupid
Quality
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.
Sad
Death
Suicide
Knowledge Is To Certain Extent A Second Existence.
Certain
Existence
It Is A Clear Gain To Sacrifice Pleasure In Order To Avoid Pain.
Inspirational
Pain
Philosophical
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
No Rose Without A Thorn But Many A Thorn Without A Rose.
Rose
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
For The Purpose Of Acquiring Gain, Everything Else Is Pushed Aside Or Thrown Overboard, For Example, As Is Philosophy By The Professors Of Philosophy.
Philosophy
Example
Purpose
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