Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; Third, it is accepted as 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.

Hatred is an affair of the heart contempt that of the head.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but is also a disruption of thought.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity.