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We May Divide Thinkers Into Those Who Think For Themselves And Those Who Think Through Others. The Latter Are The Rule And The Former The Exception. The First Are Original Thinkers In A Double Sense, And Egotists In The Noblest Meaning Of The Word.

-Arthur Schopenhauer

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We May Divide Thinkers

Arthur Schopenhauer

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We May Divide Thinkers Into Those Who Think For Themselves And Those Who Think Through Others. The Latter Are The Rule And The Former The Exception. The First Are Original Thinkers In A Double Sense, And Egotists In The Noblest Meaning Of The Word.

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To Expect A Man To Retain Everything That He Has Ever Read Is Like Expecting Him To Carry About In His Body Everything That He Has Ever Eaten.

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

Genuine Contempt, On The Other Hand, Is The Unsullied Conviction Of The Worthlessness Of Another.

First The Truth Is Ridiculed. Then It Meets Outrage. Then It Is Said To Have Been Obvious All Along.

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.

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.

Because People Have No Thoughts To Deal In, They Deal Cards, And Try And Win One Another's Money. Idiots!

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.

One Man Is More Concerned With The Impression He Makes On The Rest Of Mankind, Another With The Impression The Rest Of Mankind Makes On Him.

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

The Word Of Man Is The Most Durable Of All Material.

The Doctor Sees All The Weakness Of Mankind; The Lawyer All The Wickedness, The Theologian All The Stupidity.

All The Cruelty And Torment Of Which The World Is Full Is In Fact Merely The Necessary Result Of The Totality Of The Forms Under Which The Will To Live Is Objectified.

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.

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

Reading Is A Mere Makeshift For Original Thinking.

Poverty And Slavery Are Thus Only Two Forms Ofthe Same Thing, The Essence Of Which Is That A Man's Energies Are Expended For The Most Part Not On His Own Behalf But On That Of Others.

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.

Not To Go To The Theater Is Like Making One's Toilet Without A Mirror.

It Is Only The Hope Of What Is Claimed That Begets And Nurishes The Wish.

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.

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.

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.

Women Remain Children All Their Lives, For They Always See Only What Is Near At Hand, Cling To The Present, Take The Appearance Of A Thing For Reality, And Prefer Trifling Matters To The Most Important.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Money Alone Is Absolutely Good, Because It Is Not Only A Concrete Satisfaction Of One Need In Particular; It Is An Abstract Satisfaction Of All.

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

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.

Life Is Neither To Be Wept Over Nor To Be Laughed At But To Be Understood.

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.

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

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

A Man Of Correct Insight Among Those Who Are Duped And Deluded Resembles One Whose Watch Is Right While All The Clocks In The Town Give The Wrong Time.

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.

There Is More To Be Learnt From Every Page Of David Hume Than From The Collected Philosophical Works Of Hegel, Herbart, And Schleiermacher Are Taken Together.

Each Day Is A Little Life.

We See In Tragedy The Noblest Men, After A Long Conflict And Suffering, Finally Renounce Forever All The Pleasure Of Life And The Aims Till Then Pursued So Keenly, Or Cheerfully And Willingly Give Up Life Itself.

We Deceive And Flatter No One By Such Delicate Artificies As We Do Our Own Selves.

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.

All Pantheism Must Ultimately Be Shipwrecked On The Inescapable Demands Of Ethics, And Then On The Evil And Suffering Of The World. If The World Is A Theophany , Then Everything Done By Man, And Even By Animal, Is Equally Divine And Excellent; Nothing Can Be More Censurable And Nothing More Praiseworthy Than Anything Else; Hence There Is No Ethics.

I Am Often Surprised By The Cleverness, And Now And Again By The Stupidity, Of My Dog; And I Have Similar Experiences With Mankind.

A Man Becomes A Philosopher By Reason Of A Certain Perplexity, From Which He Seeks To Free Himself.

Just As The Witticism Brings Two Very Different Real Objects Under One Concept, The Pun Brings Two Different Concepts, By The Assistance Of Accident, Under One Word.

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.

One Can Forget Everything, Everything, Only Not Oneself, One's Own Being.

Forget Everything

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

Truth Is Most Beautiful Undraped.

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

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.

A Book Can Never Be Anything More Than The Impression Of Its Author’s Thoughts. The Value Of These Thoughts Lies Either In The Matter About Which He Has Thought, Or In The Form In Which He Develops His Matter — That Is To Say, What He Has Thought About It.

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.

The First Rule For A Good Style Is To Have Something To Say; In Fact, This In Itself Is Almost Enough.

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

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.

Men Best Show Their Character In Trifles, Where They Are Not On Their Guard. It Is In The Simplest Habits, That We Often See The Boundless Egotism Which Pays No Regard To The Feelings Of Others And Denies Nothing To Itself.

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?

If At Any Moment Time Stays His Hand, It Is Only When We Are Delivered Over To The Miseries Of Boredom.

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

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

Will Minus Intellect Constitutes Vulgarity.

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

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

For Whence Did Dante Take The Materials For His Hell But From This Our Actual World? And Yet He Made A Very Proper Hell Of 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.

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

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.

One Should Use Common Words To Say Uncommon Things

Motives Are Causes Experienced From Within.

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.

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.

Happiness Consists In Frequent Repetition Of Pleasure

He Who Does Not Enjoy Solitude Will Not Love Freedom.

The Greatest Wisdom Is To Make The Enjoyment Of The Present The Supreme Object Of Life; Because That Is The Only Reality, All Else Being Merely The Play Of Thought. On The Other Hand, Such A Course Might Just As Well Be Called The Greatest Folly: For That Which In The Next Moment Exists No More, And Vanishes Utterly, Like A Dream, Can Never Be Worth A Serious Effort.

And Yet, Just As Our Body Would Burst Asunder If The Pressure Of The Atmosphere Were Removed From It, So Would The Arrogance Of Men Expand, If Not To The Point Of Bursting Then To That Of The Most Unbridled Folly, Indeed Madness, If The Pressure Of Want, Toil, Calamity And Frustration Were Removed From Their Life. One Can Even Say That We Require At All Times A Certain Quantity Of Care Or Sorrow Or Want, As A Ship Requires Ballast, In Order To Keep On A Straight Course.

Every Nation Criticizes Every Other One - And They Are All Correct.

We Can Regard Our Life As A Uselessly Disturbing Episode In The Blissful Repose Of Nothingness.

Every Miserable Fool Who Has Nothing At All Of Which He Can Be Proud, Adopts As A Last Resource Pride In The Nation To Which He Belongs; He Is Ready And Happy To Defend All Its Faults And Follies Tooth And Nail, Thus Reimbursing Himself For His Own Inferiority.

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

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

It Is Difficult To Find Happiness Within Oneself, But It Is Impossible To Find It Anywhere Else.

Finding Happiness

Physics Is Unable To Stand On Its Own Feet, But Needs A Metaphysics On Which To Support Itself, Whatever Fine Airs It May Assume Towards The Latter.

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.

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

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.

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.

We May Divide Thinkers Into Those Who Think For Themselves And Those Who Think Through Others. The Latter Are The Rule And The Former The Exception. The First Are Original Thinkers In A Double Sense, And Egotists In The Noblest Meaning Of The Word.

There Are, First Of All, Two Kinds Of Authors: Those Who Write For The Subject's Sake, And Those Who Write For Writing's Sake. ... The Truth Is That When An Author Begins To Write For The Sake Of Covering Paper, He Is Cheating The Reader; Because He Writes Under The Pretext That He Has Something To Say.

The Old Woman Dies, The Burden Is Lifted.

Patriotism Is The Passion Of Fools And The Most Foolish Of Passions.

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.

To Become Reconciled To A Friend With Whom You Have Broken, Is A Form Of Weakness; And You Pay The Penalty Of It When He Takes The First Opportunity Of Doing Precisely The Very Thing Which Brought About The Breach.

To Conceal A Want Of Real Ideas, Many Make For Themselves An Imposing Apparatus Of Long Compound Words, Intricate Flourishes And Phrases, New And Unheard-of Expressions, All Of Which Together Furnish An Extremely Difficult Jargon That Sounds Very Learned. Yet With All This They Say-precisely Nothing.

Honor Means That A Man Is Not Exceptional; Fame, That He Is. Fame Is Something Which Must Be Won; Honor, Only Something Which Must Not Be Lost.

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.

Everything That Happens, Happens Of Necessity.

A Hedge Between Keeps Friendship Green.

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.

It Is In The Treatment Of Trifles That A Person Shows What They Are.

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

It Is Only The Man Whose Intellect Is Clouded By His Sexual Impulse That Could Give The Name Of The Fair Sex To That Undersized, Narrow-shouldered, Broad-hipped, And Short-legged Race.

Every Possession And Every Happiness Is But Lent By Chance For An Uncertain Time, And May Therefore Be Demanded Back The Next Hour.

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?

Treat A Work Of Art Like A Prince. Let It Speak To You First.

The Heavy Armor Becomes The Light Dress Of Childhood; The Pain Is Brief, The Joy Unending.

Life Without Pain Has No Meaning.

With Health, Everything Is A Source Of Pleasure; Without It, Nothing Else, Whatever It May Be, Is Enjoyable...healt H Is By Far The Most Important Element In Human Happiness.

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.

When A New Truth Enters The World, The First Stage Of Reaction To It Is Ridicule, The Second Stage Is Violent Opposition, And In The Third Stage, That Truth Comes To Be Regarded As Self-evident.

Intellect Is Invisible To The Man Who Has None.

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.

A Man Of Intellect Is Like An Artist Who Gives A Concert Without Any Help From Anyone Else, Playing On A Single Instrument--a Piano, Say, Which Is A Little Orchestra In Itself. Such A Man Is A Little World In Himself; And The Effect Produced By Various Instruments Together, He Produces Single-handed, In The Unity Of His Own Consciousness. Like The Piano, He Has No Place In A Symphony; He Is A Soloist And Performs By Himself--in Soli Tude, It May Be; Or If In The Company With Other Instruments, Only As Principal; Or For Setting The Tone, As In Singing.

Life Is A Constant Process Of Dying.

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

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.

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

If You Want To Know Your True Opinion Of Someone, Watch The Effect Produced In You By The First Sight Of A Letter From Him.

The Man Who Goes Up In A Balloon Does Not Feel As If He Were Ascending; He Only Sees The Earth Sinking Deeper Below Him.

Marrying Means Doing Whatever Possible To Become Repulsed Of Each Other

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.

We Seldom Think Of What We Have But Always Of What We Lack. Therefore, Rather Than Grateful, We Are Bitter.

The World Is Not A Factory And Animals Are Not Products For Our Use

Vulgar People Take Huge Delight In The Faults And Follies Of Great Men.

Necessity Is The Constant Scourge Of The Lower Classes, Ennui Of The Higher Ones.

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 . . .

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

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

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.

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.

There Is In The World Only The Choice Between Loneliness And Vulgarity. All Young People Should Be Taught Now To Put Up With Loneliness ... Because The Less Man Is Compelled To Come Into Contact With Others, The Better Off He Is.

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 Harmonised; It Is True To Life. On The Other Hand, The Intellectual Attainments Of The Mere Man Of Learning Are Like A Large Palette, Full Of All Sorts Of Colours, Which At Most Are Systematically Arranged, But Devoid Of Harmony, Connection And Meaning.

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

Every Nation Ridicules Other Nations, And All Are Right.

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

Gaiety Alone, As It Were, Is The Hard Cash Of Happiness; Everything Else Is Just A Promissory Note.

Happiness And Love

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.

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.

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

A Man's Face As A Rule Says More, And More Interesting Things, Than His Mouth, For It Is A Compendium Of Everything His Mouth Will Ever Say, In That It Is The Monogram Of All This Man's Thoughts And Aspirations.

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.

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

The Greatest Intellectual Capacities Are Only Found In Connection With A Vehement And Passionate Will.

Empirical Sciences Prosecuted Purely For Their Own Sake, And Without Philosophic Tendency Are Like A Face Without Eyes.

We Can Come To Look Upon The Deaths Of Our Enemies With As Much Regret As We Feel For Those Of Our Friends, Namely, When We Miss Their Existence As Witnesses To Our Success.

Pride Works _from Within_; It Is The Direct Appreciation Of Oneself. Vanity Is The Desire To Arrive At This Appreciation Indirectly, From Without.

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.

Something Of Great Importance Now Past Is Inferior To Something Of Little Importance Now Present, In That The Latter Is A Reality, And Related To The Former As Something To Nothing.

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

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

Wealth As Well As Sea Water. The More We Drink, The More Thirsty. The So Famous

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 To You Than A Much Smaller Amount If You Have Not Thought It Over For Yourself; Because Only Through Ordering What You Know By Comparing Every Truth With Every Other Truth Can You Take Complete Possession Of Your Knowledge And Get It Into Your Power. You Can Think About Only What You Know, So You Ought To Learn Something; On The Other Hand, You Can Know Only What You Have Thought About.

Animals Learn Death First At The Moment Of Death;...man Approaches Death With The Knowledge It Is Closer Every Hour, And This Creates A Feeling Of Uncertainty Over His Life, Even For Him Who Forgets In The Business Of Life That Annihilation Is Awaiting Him. It Is For This Reason Chiefly That We Have Philosophy And Religion.

Reading Is Merely A Surrogate For Thinking For Yourself; It Means Letting Someone Else Direct Your Thoughts.

Solitude Will Be Welcomed Or Endured Or Avoided, According As A Man's Personal Value Is Large Or Small.

Personal Values

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.

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.

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.

The Assumption That Animals Are Without Rights, And The Illusion That Our Treatment Of Them Has No Moral Significance, Is A Positively Outrageous Example Of Western Crudity And Barbarity. Universal Compassion Is The Only Guarantee Of Morality.

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

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.

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.

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

Man Is Never Happy, But Spends His Whole Life In Striving After Something Which He Thinks Will Make Him So.

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.

If God Made This World, Then I Would Not Want To Be The God. It Is Full Of Misery And Distress That It Breaks My Heart.

The Present Is The Only Reality And The Only Certainty.

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

Apart From Man, No Being Wonders At Its Own Experience.

It Is A Curious Fact That In Bad Days We Can Very Vividly Recall The Good Time That Is Now No More; But That In Good Days, We Have Only A Very Cold And Imperfect Memory Of The Bad.

Whoever Wants His Judgment To Be Believed, Should Express It Coolly And Dispassionately; For All Vehemence Springs From The Will. And So The Judgment Might Be Attributed To The Will And Not To Knowledge, Which By Its Nature Is Cold.

Change Alone Is Eternal, Perpetual, Immortal.

Patriotism, When It Wants To Make Itself Felt In The Domain Of Learning, Is A Dirty Fellow Who Should Be Thrown Out Of Doors.

Music Is The Melody Whose Text Is The World.

There Is Only One Inborn Error. And That Is The Notion That We Exist In Order To Be Happy.

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!

The Two Enemies Of Human Happiness Are Pain And Boredom.

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.

The Fruits Of Christianity Were Religious Wars, Butcheries, Crusades, Inquisitions, Extermination Of The Natives Of America, And The Introduction Of African Slaves In Their Place.

Native American

To Use Many Words To Communicate Few Thoughts Is Everywhere The Unmistakable Sign Of Mediocrity. To Gather Much Thought Into Few Words Stamps The Man Of Genius.

Time Is That In Which All Things Pass Away.

Time Management

For Our Improvement We Need A Mirror.

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.

If I Maintain My Silence About My Secret It Is My Prisoner...if I Let It Slip From My Tongue, I Am Its Prisoner.

Boredom Is Just The Reverse Side Of Fascination: Both Depend On Being Outside Rather Than Inside A Situation, And One Leads To The Other.

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.

There Are, First Of All, Two Kinds Of Authors: Those Who Write For The Subject's Sake, And Those Who Write For Writing's Sake. The First Kind Have Had Thoughts Or Experiences Which Seem To Them Worth Communicating, While The Second Kind Need Money And Consequently Write For Money.

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

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

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

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.

The Universe Is A Dream Dreamed By A Single Dreamer Where All The Dream Characters Dream Too.

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

All Religions Promise A Reward Beyond Life, In Eternity, For Excellences Of The Will Or Heart, But None For Excellences Of The Head Or Understanding.

No One Writes Anything Worth Writing, Unless He Writes Entirely For The Sake Of His Subject.

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.

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.

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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