Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Arthur Schopenhauer
Age: 72 †
Born: 1788
Born: February 22
Died: 1860
Died: September 21
Musicologist
Philosopher
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Danzig
Nicht
Choose
Mensch

More quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
The eternal being..., as it lives in us, also lives in every animal.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Gaiety alone, as it were, is the hard cash of happiness everything else is just a promissory note.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
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
Image
First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
With health, everything is a source of pleasure without it, nothing else, whatever it may be, is enjoyable...Healt h is by far the most important element in human happiness.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
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
Image
The old woman dies, the burden is lifted.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
It is only the hope of what is claimed that begets and nurishes the wish.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
the brut first knows death when it dies, but man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives and this makes his life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised this character of constant anaihilation in the whole of life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Man shows his character best in trifles.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Music is the melody whose text is the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer