Quote

Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.

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
Nothing
Philosopher
Encounter
Speculators
Great
Soldier
Soldiers
Businessmen
World
Doctors
Encounters
Masks
Merely
Priests
Knights
Usually
Mask
Concealed
Behinds
Civilized
Lawyers
Industrialists
Behind
Lawyer
Businessman
Parsons
Thousand
Appear
Philosophers
Masquerade

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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.
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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.
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Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.
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Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.
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What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.
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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.
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Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind.
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Something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing.
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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.
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Indeed, intolerance is essential only to monotheism an only God is by nature a jealous God who will not allow another to live. On the other hand, polytheistic gods are naturally tolerant, they live and let live.
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Hatred is an affair of the heart contempt that of the head.
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Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.
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A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.
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Life without pain has no meaning.
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The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.
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There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.
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Everything that happens, happens of necessity.
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Whatever torch we kindle, and whatever space it may illuminate, our horizon will always remain encircled by the depth of night.
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Every nation criticizes every other one - and they are all correct.
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