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The life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.

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
Life
Tragedy
Comedy
Gone
Individual
Character
Every
Really
Detail
Always
Details

More quotes by 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!
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Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.
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I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.
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If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
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Motives are causes experienced from within.
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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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Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The scenes and events of long ago, and the persons who took part in them, wear a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and so it always seems defective.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must.
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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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...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.
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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Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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You must treat a work of art like a great man: stand before it and wait patiently till it deigns to speak.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.
Arthur Schopenhauer