Quote

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

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
Person
Laughed
Way
Excuse
Stupid
Saying
Help
Helping
Attempted
Cannot
Pessimism
Persons
Precisely

More quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

Image
It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulse that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
On the path of actions, great heart is the chief recommendation on that works, a great head.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Unrest is the mark of existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
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
Image
A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Knowledge is to certain extent a second existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
A man of genius can hardly be sociable, for what dialogues could indeed be so intelligent and entertaining as his own monologues?
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.
Arthur Schopenhauer