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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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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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Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The charlatan takes very different shapes according to circumstances but at bottom he is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.
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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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Music is the melody whose text is the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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There is no vice of which a man can be guilty, no meanness, no shabbiness, no unkindness, which excites so much indignation among his contemporaries, friends and neighbours, as his success. This is the one unpardonable crime, which reason cannot defend, nor humility mitigate.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Knowledge is to certain extent a second existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.
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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It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another but women are by nature enemies.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.
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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The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.
Arthur Schopenhauer