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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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Arthur Schopenhauer
Age: 72 †
Born: 1788
Born: February 22
Died: 1860
Died: September 21
Musicologist
Philosopher
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Danzig
Helping
Attempted
Cannot
Pessimism
Persons
Precisely
Person
Laughed
Way
Excuse
Stupid
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More quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

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The world is my representation
Arthur Schopenhauer
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All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality of the forms under which the will to live is objectified.
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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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If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much energy left for anything else whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease.
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Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Whoever heard me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me, but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally an entirely different one.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.
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If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose conversation you happen to overhear, you should imagine that you are listening to a dialogue of two fools in a comedy.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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For our improvement we need a mirror.
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.
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It is most important to allow the brain the full measure of sleep which is required to restore it for sleep is to a man's whole nature what winding up is to a clock.
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... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Many books serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Honor means that a man is not exceptional fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won honor, only something which must not be lost.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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
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Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Our life is a loan received from death with sleep as the daily interest on this loan.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
Arthur Schopenhauer