Quote

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

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
Nations
Faults
Resource
Lasts
Thus
Nails
Last
Resources
Belongs
Happy
Pride
Defend
Adopts
Nothing
Fool
Folly
Follies
Every
Nation
Racism
Tooth
Proud
Miserable
Nail
Ready
Teeth
Inferiority

More quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

Image
The tallest oak tree once was an acorn that any pig could have swallowed.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight a woman at eighteen.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
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
Image
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
The reason domestic pets are so lovable and so helpful to us is because they enjoy, quietly and placidly, the present moment.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
History is the long, difficult and confused dream of Mankind.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
To conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, new and unheard-of expressions, all of which together furnish an extremely difficult jargon that sounds very learned. Yet with all this they say-precisely nothing.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
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
Image
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Honor means that a man is not exceptional fame, that he is.
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
Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones for life is short, and time and energy limited.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
It is not what things are objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the reverse.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Every satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire, so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will.
Arthur Schopenhauer