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

Arthur Schopenhauer

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Arthur Schopenhauer
Age: 72 †
Born: 1788
Born: February 22
Died: 1860
Died: September 21
Musicologist
Philosopher
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Danzig
Hope
Desire
Thing
Probability
Confusion

More quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the miseries of boredom.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
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Do not shorten the morning by getting up late look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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!
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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 than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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 . . .
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Life without pain has no meaning.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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To become indignant at [people's] conduct is as foolish as to be angry with a stone because it rolls into your path. And with many people the wisest thing you can do, is to resolve to make use of those whom you cannot alter.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The eternal being..., as it lives in us, also lives in every animal.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Not to go to the theater is like making one's toilet without a mirror.
Arthur Schopenhauer