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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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Arthur Schopenhauer
Age: 72 †
Born: 1788
Born: February 22
Died: 1860
Died: September 21
Musicologist
Philosopher
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Danzig
Direct
Thoughts
Reading
Means
Else
Surrogate
Someone
Surrogates
Mean
Letting
Thinking
Merely

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There is one respect in which beasts show real wisdom... their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.
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Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
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A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.
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Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
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Will without intellect is the most vulgar and common thing in the world, possessed by every blockhead, who, in the gratification of his passions, shows the stuff of which he is made.
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The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood the pain is brief, the joy unending.
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[T]he appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres.
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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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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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Das Ganze der Erfahrung gleicht einer Geheimschrift und die Philosophie der Entzifferung derselben. The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy is like the deciphering of it.
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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.
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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.
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We must set limits to our wishes, curb our desires, moderate our anger, always remembering that an individual can attain only an infinitesimal share in anything that is worth having and that on the other hand, everyone must incur many of the ills of life
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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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We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.
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Time is that in which all things pass away.
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Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.
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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.
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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.
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Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.
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