Quote

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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Arthur Schopenhauer
Age: 72 †
Born: 1788
Born: February 22
Died: 1860
Died: September 21
Musicologist
Philosopher
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Danzig
Would
Books
Astray
Wrong
Dry
Show
Followed
Read
Guidance
Shows
Serve
Book
Merely
Many
Thoughts
Way
Ways

More quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

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Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another but women are by nature enemies.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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One man is more concerned with the impression he makes on the rest of mankind, another with the impression the rest of mankind makes on him.
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Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.
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Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light.
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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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Not to go to the theater is like making one's toilet without a mirror.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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.
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There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
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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Life is a business that does not cover the costs.
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That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject.
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Mensch kann tun was er will er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)
Arthur Schopenhauer
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There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome to be got over.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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
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It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Unrest is the mark of existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer