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Mensch kann tun was er will er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)

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
Mensch
Nicht
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More quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

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[T]he appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Our life is a loan received from death with sleep as the daily interest on this loan.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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A man must have grown old and lived long in order to see how short life is.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering-from positive evil.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Man shows his character best in trifles.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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We seldom speak of what we have but often of what we lack.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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. ... The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Every truth passes through 3 stages before it is recognized 1)ridicule 2) opposition 3) accepted as self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Honor means that a man is not exceptional fame, that he is.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Human existence is an error...it is bad today and every day it gets worse, until the worst happens.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man IS contributes more to his happiness than what he HAS.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain… Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more but that in good days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad.
Arthur Schopenhauer