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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.

-Arthur Schopenhauer

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What A Person Is

Arthur Schopenhauer

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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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One Should Use Common Words To Say Uncommon Things

For Our Improvement We Need A Mirror.

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

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

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

A Writer Should Never Be Brief At The Expense Of Being Clear.

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.

Opinion Is Like A Pendulum And Obeys The Same Law. If It Goes Past The Centre Of Gravity On One Side, It Must Go A Like Distance On The Other; And It Is Only After A Certain Time That It Finds The True Point At Which It Can Remain At Rest.

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.

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.

I Know Of No More Beautiful Prayer Than That Which The Hindus Of Old Used In Closing: May All That Have Life Be Delivered From Suffering.

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.

The Life Of Every Individual Is Really Always A Tragedy, But Gone Through In Detail, It Has The Character Of A Comedy.

We Will Gradually Become Indifferent To What Goes On In The Minds Of Other People When We Acquire A Knowledge Of The Superficial Nature Of Their Thoughts, The Narrowness Of Their Views And Of The Number Of Their Errors. Whoever Attaches A Lot Of Value To The Opinions Of Others Pays Them Too Much Honor.

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.

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

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

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.

Rudeness Is Better Than Any Argument; It Totally Eclipses Intellect.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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 We Were Not All So Interested In Ourselves, Life Would Be So Uninteresting That None Of Us Would Be Able To Endure It.

Any Book, Which Is At All Important, Should Be Reread Immediately

They Tell Us That Suicide Is The Greatest Piece Of Cowardice... That Suicide Is Wrong; When It Is Quite Obvious That There Is Nothing In The World To Which Every Man Has A More Unassailable Title Than To His Own Life And Person.

The Shortness Of Life, So Often Lamented, May Be The Best Thing About It.

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.

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.

Mankind Cannot Get On Without A Certain Amount Of Absurdity.

Jedetrennung Gibt Einenvorgeschmack Destodesund Jedes Wiedersehen Einenvorgeschmack Der Auferstehung. Every Parting Is A Foretaste Of Death, And Every Reunion A Foretaste Of Resurrection.

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.

Many Undoubtedly Owe Their Good Fortune To The Circumstance That They Possess A Pleasing Smile With Which They Win Hearts. Yet These Hearts Would Do Better To Beware And To Learn From Hamlet's Tables That One May Smile, And Smile, And Be A Villain.

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

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.

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.

Ordinary People Merely Think How They Shall 'spend' Their Time; A Man Of Talent Tries To 'use' It.

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

Finding Happiness

Optimism Is Not Only A False But Also A Pernicious Doctrine, For It Presents Life As A Desirable State And Man's Happiness As Its Aim And Object. Starting From This, Everyone Then Believes He Has The Most Legitimate Claim To Happiness And Enjoyment. If, As Usually Happens, These Do Not Fall To His Lot, He Believes That He Suffers An Injustice, In Fact That He Misses The Whole Point Of His Existence.

If God Made The World, I Would Not Be That God, For The Misery Of The World Would Break My Heart.

Newspapers Are The Second Hand Of History.

Hope Is The Confusion Of The Desire For A Thing With Its Probability.

Malebranche Teaches That We See All Things In God Himself. This Is Certainly Equivalent To Explaining Something Unknown By Something Even More Unknown. Moreover, According To Him, We See Not Only All Things In God, But God Is Also The Sole Activity Therein, So That Physical Causes Are So Only Apparently; They Are Merely Occasional Causes. ( Recherches De La Vérité , Livre Vi, Seconde Partie, Chap. 3.) And So Here We Have Essentially The Pantheism Of Spinoza Who Appears To Have Learned More From Malebranche Than From Descartes.

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.

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

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.

Personal Courage Is Really A Very Subordinate Virtue-a Virtue, Indeed, In Which We Are Surpassed By The Lower Animals; Or Else You Would Not Hear People Say, As Brave As A Lion.

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?

Every Parting Gives A Foretaste Of Death, Every Reunion A Hint Of The Resurrection.

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

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.

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

All Truth Passes Through Three Stages. First, It Is Ridiculed. Second, It Is Violently Opposed. Third, It Is Accepted As Being Self-evident.

Everybody's Friend Is Nobody's.

Every Nation Ridicules Other Nations, And All Are Right.

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

Pride Is Generally Censured And Decried, But Mainly By Those Who Have Nothing To Be Proud Of.

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.

You Must Treat A Work Of Art Like A Great Man: Stand Before It And Wait Patiently Till It Deigns To Speak.

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

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

A Man's Knowledge May Be Said To Be Mature, In Other Words, When It Has Reached The Most Complete State Of Perfection To Which He, As An Individual, Is Capable Of Bringing It, When An Exact Correspondence Is Established Between The Whole Of His Abstract Ideas And The Things He Has Actually Perceived For Himself. His Will Mean That Each Of His Abstract Ideas Rests, Directly Or Indirectly, Upon A Basis Of Observation, Which Alone Endows It With Any Real Value; And Also That He Is Able To Place Every Observation He Makes Under The Right Abstract Idea Which Belongs To It.

He Who Does Not Enjoy Solitude Will Not Love Freedom.

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

I Have Described Religion As The Metaphysics Of The People.

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

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.

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.

Politeness Is To Human Nature What Warmth Is To Wax.

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.

If The World Were A Paradise Of Luxury And Ease, A Land Flowing With Milk And Honey, Where Every Jack Obtained His Jill At Once And Without Any Difficulty, Men Would Either Die Of Boredom Or Hang Themselves; Or There Would Be Wars, Massacres, And Murders; So That In The End Mankind Would Inflict More Suffering On Itself Than It Has Now To Accept At The Hands Of Nature.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Nobler And More Perfect A Thing Is, The Later And Slower It Is In Arriving At Maturity. A Man Reaches The Maturity Of His Reasoning Powers And Mental Faculties Hardly Before The Age Of Twenty-eight; A Woman At Eighteen.

Style Is What Gives Value And Currency To Thoughts.

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.

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.

A Man Of Genius Can Hardly Be Sociable, For What Dialogues Could Indeed Be So Intelligent And Entertaining As His Own Monologues?

Honor Means That A Man Is Not Exceptional; Fame, That He Is.

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

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.

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.

Genius Is To Other Gifts What The Carbuncle Is To The Precious Stones. It Sends Forth Its Own Light, Whereas Other Stones Only Reflect Borrowed Light.

Precious Stones

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.

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.

Human Existence Is An Error...it Is Bad Today And Every Day It Gets Worse, Until The Worst Happens.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Reading Is A Mere Makeshift For Original Thinking.

[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.

Wealth Is Like Sea-water; The More We Drink, The Thirstier We Become; And The Same Is True Of Fame.

Just As One Spoils The Stomach By Overfeeding And Thereby Impairs The Whole Body, So Can One Overload And Choke The Mind By Giving It Too Much Nourishment. For The More One Reads The Fewer Are The Traces Left Of What One Has Read; The Mind Is Like A Tablet That Has Been Written Over And Over. Hence It Is Impossible To Reflect; And It Is Only By Reflection That One Can Assimilate What One Has Read. If One Reads Straight Ahead Without Pondering Over It Later, What Has Been Read Does Not Take Root, But Is For The Most Part Lost.

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

Compassion Is The Basis Of Morality.

Hatred Is An Affair Of The Heart; Contempt That Of The Head.

What People Commonly Call Fate Is, As A General Rule, Nothing But Their Own Stupid And Foolish Conduct.

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.

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.

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.

It's The Niceties That Make The Difference Fate Gives Us The Hand, And We Play The Cards.

In The Blessings As Well As In The Ills Of Life, Less Depends Upon What Befalls Us Than Upon The Way In Which It Is Met.

Life Swings Like A Pendulum Backward And Forward Between Pain And Boredom.

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

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.

Authority And Example Lead The World.

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

Happiness And Love

What Now On The Other Hand Makes People Sociable Is Their Incapacity To Endure Solitude And Thus Themselves.

No Doubt, When Modesty Was Made A Virtue, It Was A Very Advantageous Thing For The Fools, For Everybody Is Expected To Speak Of Himself As If He Were One.

Life Is A Business That Does Not Cover The Costs.

Freedom Of The Press Is To The Machinery Of The State What The Safety Valve Is To The Steam Engine.

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.

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

Vedas Are The Most Rewarding And The Most Elevating Book Which Can Be Possible In The World.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Young Should Early Be Trained To Bear Being Left Alone; For It Is A Source Of Happiness And Peace Of Mind.

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

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

In The Whole World There Is No Study So Beneficial And So Elevating As That Of The Upanishads. It Has Been The Solace Of My Life, It Will Be The Solace Of My Death.

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.

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

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.

Change Alone Is Eternal, Perpetual, Immortal.

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

I Have Long Held The Opinion That The Amount Of Noise That Anyone Can Bear Undisturbed Stands In Inverse Proportion To His Mental Capacity And Therefore Be Regarded As A Pretty Fair Measure Of It.

Truth Is Most Beautiful Undraped.

Alle Befriedigung, Oder Was Man Gemeinhin Glu« Ck Nennt, Ist Eigentlich Und Wesentlich Immer Nur Negativ Und Durchaus Nie Positiv. All Satisfaction, Or What Iscommonlycalled Happiness, Is Really And Essentially Always Negative Only, And Never Positive.

As A General Rule, The Longer A Man's Fame Is Likely To Last, The Later It Will Be In Coming; For All Excellent Products Require Time For Their Development.

To Find Out Your Real Opinion Of Someone, Judge The Impression You Have When You First See A Letter From Them.

First Impression

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Animal Lacks Both Anxiety And Hope Because Its Consciousness Is Restricted To What Is Clearly Evident And Thus To The Present Moment: The Animal Is The Present Incarnate.

Life Is A Constant Process Of Dying.

In Many Cases Hate A Person Is Rooted In The Involuntary Estimate Of Its Virtues.

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

At Bottom, Every State Regards Another As A Gang Of Robbers Who Will Fall Upon It As Soon As There Is An Opportunity.

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.

Will Power Is To The Mind Like A Strong Blind Man Who Carries On His Shoulders A Lame Man Who Can See.

The Problem With Germans Is That They Look In The Clouds For What Lies At Their Feet.

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.

Nothing In Life Gives A Man So Much Courage As The Attainment Or Renewal Of The Conviction That Other People Regard Him With Favor; Because It Means That Everyone Joins To Give Him Help And Protection, Which Is An Infinitely Stronger Bulwark Against The Ills Of Life Than Anything He Can Do Himself.

Pride Works From Within; It Is The Direct Appreciation Of Oneself.

That Which Knows All Things And Is Known By None Is The Subject.

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.

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.

In Their Hearts Women Think That It Is Men's Business To Earn Money And Theirs To Spend It.

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

The Truth Can Wait, For It Lives A Long Life.

It Is A Wise Thing To Be Polite; Consequently, It Is A Stupid Thing To Be Rude. To Make Enemies By Unnecessary And Willful Incivility, Is Just As Insane A Proceeding As To Set Your House On Fire. For Politeness Is Like A Counter--an Avowedly False Coin, With Which It Is Foolish To Be Stingy.

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.

Boredom Is Just The Reverse Side Of Fascination.

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.

Every Genius Is A Great Child; He Gazes Out At The World As Something Strange, A Spectacle, And Therefore With Purely Objective Interest

It Is A Clear Gain To Sacrifice Pleasure In Order To Avoid Pain.

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.

There Is Something In Us That Is Wiser Than Our Head.

It Is Only When A Man Is Alone That He Is Really Free.

Wicked Thoughts And Worthless Efforts Gradually Set Their Mark On The Face, Especially The Eyes.

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

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.

We Must Set Limits To Our Wishes, Curb Our Desires, Moderate Our Anger, Always Remembering That An Individual Can Attain Only An Infinitesimal Share In Anything That Is Worth Having; And That On The Other Hand, Everyone Must Incur Many Of The Ills Of Life

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

What People Commonly Call Fate Is Mostly Their Own Stupidity.

Authors May Be Divided Into Falling Stars, Planets, And Fixed Stars: The First Have A Momentary Effect; The Second Have A Much Longer Duration; But The Third Are Unchangeable, Possess Their Own Light, And Work For All Time.

Talent Hits A Target No One Else Can Hit; Genius Hits A Target No One Else Can See.

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

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

Friends And Acquaintances Are The Surest Passport To Fortune.

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

A Man Who Has No Mental Needs, Because His Intellect Is Of The Narrow And Normal Amount, Is, In The Strict Sense Of The Word, What Is Called A Philistine.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Exaggeration Of Every Kind Is As Essential To Journalism As It Is To Dramatic Art, For The Object Of Journalism Is To Make Events Go As Far As Possible.

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

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Miguel De Cervantes

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