Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.

an intellect that positively excels even in one single direction is among the rarest of natural phenomena.

Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath, but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip. If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the misery of boredom.

Whatever fate befalls you, do not give way to great rejoicings or great lamentation; partly because all things are full of change, and your fortune may turn at any moment; partly because men are so apt to be deceived in their judgment as to what is good or bad for them.

with man sexual gratification is tied to a very obstinate selectivity which is sometimes intensified into a more or less passionate love. Thus sexuality becomes for man a source of brief pleasure and protracted suffering.

The truest fame, the fame that comes after death, is never heard of by its recipient; and yet he is called a happy man. His happiness lay both in the possession of those great qualities which won him fame, and in the opportunity that was granted him of developing them—the leisure he had to act as he pleased, to dedicate himself to his favorite pursuits. It is only work done from the heart that ever gains the laurel

Nothing is without a reason why it is rather than it is not

whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.

everyone desires to achieve old age, that is to say a condition in which one can say: Today is bad, and day by day it will get worse - until at last the worst of all arrives.

In accordance with such zeal, by reducing the external world to a matter of faith, he wanted merely to open a little door for faith in general, and to prepare the credit for that which was afterwards actually to be offered on credit; just as if, to introduce paper money, we tried to appeal to the fact that the value of the ringing coin depended merely on the stamp the State put on it.

The highest, i.e., the most general concepts, are the poorest; ultimately these are just empty shells, as, e.g., being, essence, thing, becoming, ect. - incidentally, whatever could philosophical systems produce when they are merely spun out of these same concepts and have as their matter only such empty shells of thought? They must be infinitely empty and poor, and therefore, turn out to be tedious and suffocating.

But to be in possession of undisturbed leisure, is far from being the common lot; nay, it is something alien to human nature, for the ordinary man's destiny is to spend life in procuring what is necessary for the subsistence of himself and his family;