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

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
Many
Thoughts
Way
Ways
Would
Books
Astray
Wrong
Dry
Show
Followed
Read
Guidance
Shows
Serve
Book
Merely

More quotes by 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
The life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another but women are by nature enemies.
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
At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
It is a wise thing to be polite consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look ridiculous because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany , then everything done by man, and even by animal, is equally divine and excellent nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else hence there is no ethics.
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
We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Image
In their hearts women think that it is men's business to earn money and theirs to spend it.
Arthur Schopenhauer