Quotes from Arthur Schopenhauer

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.

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.

Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.

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.

What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.

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.

That I could clamber to the frozen moon. And draw the ladder after me.

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.