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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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I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Every parting gives a foretaste of death every remeeting a foretaste of the resurrection. That is why even people who are indifferent to each other rejoice so much if they meet again after twenty or thirty years of separation.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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...nothing at all rides on the life or death of the individual.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Pride works _from within_ it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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We must set limits to our wishes, curb our desires, moderate our anger, always remembering that an individual can attain only an infinitesimal share in anything that is worth having and that on the other hand, everyone must incur many of the ills of life
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Women remain children all their lives, for they always see only what is near at hand, cling to the present, take the appearance of a thing for reality, and prefer trifling matters to the most important.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood the pain is brief, the joy unending.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Wealth as well as sea water. The more we drink, the more thirsty. The so famous
Arthur Schopenhauer
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No one can transcend their own individuality.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Das Ganze der Erfahrung gleicht einer Geheimschrift und die Philosophie der Entzifferung derselben. The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy is like the deciphering of it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The greatest intellectual capacities are only found in connection with a vehement and passionate will.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.
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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Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The first rule for a good style is to have something to say in fact, this in itself is almost enough.
Arthur Schopenhauer