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A happy life is impos­si­ble the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.

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
Attain
Heroic
Happy
Best
Men
Life

More quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

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Life is a business that does not cover the costs.
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I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.
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Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state depends, finally, upon the kind of matter that pervades and engrosses our consciousness and what we compare it to - better and we envious and sad, worse and we feel grateful and happy.
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The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains why women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men... and why, on the contrary, they are inferior to men as regards justice, and less honourable and conscientious.
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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.
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Whatever torch we kindle, and whatever space it may illuminate, our horizon will always remain encircled by the depth of night.
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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.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the miseries of boredom.
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Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.
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Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.
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To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.
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The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.
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Every parting gives a foretaste of death every remeeting a foretaste of the resurrection. That is why even people who are indifferent to each other rejoice so much if they meet again after twenty or thirty years of separation.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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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
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A man of talent will strive for money and reputation but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do
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.
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