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When a new truth enters the world, the first stage of reaction to it is ridicule, the second stage is violent opposition, and in the third stage, that truth comes to be regarded as self-evident.

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
World
Violent
Ridicule
Second
Regarded
Stage
Evident
Comes
Reaction
Truth
Reactions
Firsts
Opposition
Self
Third
First
Thirds
Enters

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The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.
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Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.
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The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he were ascending he only sees the earth sinking deeper below him.
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Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood.
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Any book, which is at all important, should be reread immediately
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Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
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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.
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Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.
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The problem with Germans is that they look in the clouds for what lies at their feet.
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What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.
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... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)
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It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer
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The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
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I love looking at famous people. Because of the way they look. Because of the way photography makes them look famous.
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At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.
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A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.
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That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject.
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Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.
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The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
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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.
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