Quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

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Art reproduces the eternal ideas which it has conceived by means of pure contemplation, that is, the essential and permanent of all the phenomena of the world.

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There is a special knowledge that applies to what exists independently and outside of any relationship, to what constitutes the very essence of the world and the true substratum of phenomena... This way of knowing is art, it is the work of genius...

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"What is life?" - To this question, every authentic and successful work of art gives us a perfectly valid answer, in a specific way.

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The mother of the useful arts is necessity, that of the fine arts is abundance. The father of the former is the intellect, of the latter, the genius, which, itself, is a kind of abundance; it represents, namely, the excess of the power of knowledge, beyond the limits imposed by the service of the will.

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Not the glory, but the qualities by which it is acquired, are the precious thing.

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The envy of men shows how unhappy they are, and their incessant attention to what others are and do, how hateful it is to them.

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Let us look especially at those who are worse off than us, than at those who seem to us to be better off.

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A child's hour is longer than an old man's day.

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Christianity teaches, "Love your neighbor as yourself." And I say: "Know yourself not only in the deed of your neighbor, but also in that of the most distant."

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Characters can be good or bad only relatively, because there are no absolute good or bad. The difference between them lies in the extent to which self-interest is preferable to someone else's interest. If this boundary line is located halfway between the two interests, then it is a good character. But in most people it is so unbalanced that for one meter of humanity there are ten meters of selfishness.

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A characteristic feature of eminent minds is the spontaneity of their opinions and sentences. Everything they produce is the result of their own thinking.

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Scientists are those who have read many books; but it is the thinkers, the geniuses, the men of culture, and the movers of the world, who have read directly from the book of the Universe.

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Intellectual superiority is acquired through tireless and unceasing activity of the mind. What exactly this activity is directed towards is not essential.

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A wretch who has nothing to be proud of clings to the only possible thing and is proud of the nation to which he belongs.

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A crowd has eyes and ears and little else.

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Philosophy, strictly speaking, is a desire to know in the imagination what does not belong to the imagination and what is hidden within ourselves.

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To one who is intellectually high, solitude brings a double benefit: first, he can be with himself, and second, he can not be with others. This last benefit you will greatly appreciate when you realize how much coercion, how many burdens and what danger each acquaintance brings with it.

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Man avoids, endures, or loves solitude according to the value he places on his Ego.

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I don't think a genius could have a big mouth: that trait has too much to do with that of an animal. Furthermore, I believe that the forehead and eyes express intelligence and the mouth expresses will.

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Empirical sciences, when practiced only for themselves, without any philosophical aim, are like a face without eyes.

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Egoism, armed with intelligence, tries to escape from the evil consequences that flow from it and that are directed against itself.

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To live among men and women, we must allow each man to be himself. If we absolutely condemn someone, then he will have no choice but to treat us as mortal enemies: because we are ready to give him the right to exist only on condition that he ceases to be himself.

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To read is to think with someone else's head instead of your own.

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"Through death sin entered the world," says Christian doctrine. But death is only an exaggerated, dramatic, ostentatious expression of what the world itself is. Therefore, it would be more correct to say: the world is a continuous sin.

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Honor is an outward conscience, and conscience is an inward honor.

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Human life can, in fact, be called neither long nor short, because, in essence, it is the very measure by which we measure all other terms.

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Education relates to the natural advantages of the intellect, as the planets and satellites do to the sun. For an educated common man does not speak what he himself thinks, but what others have thought, and does not what he could do himself, but what he has learned from others.

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Optimism seems to me not only absurd, but downright shameless, a bitter mockery of the indescribable sufferings of mankind.

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One of the essential obstacles to the prosperity of the human race must be considered the fact that people do not listen to the one who is smarter than others, but to the one who speaks the loudest.

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Loneliness is the fate of all eminent minds.

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The common people give themselves to the full of existence, and the genius is predominantly in a mood of knowledge. Hence the double difference between a genius and a common man. First of all, to be is possible only in one way..., and to be known is to know innumerable things, identifying with them, to a certain extent, through... objective existence. Second, seeing, knowing is pleasant, but being is terrible, because being for the sake of being is torment. From the first difference it follows that the life of ordinary people is, in fact, extremely boring. We see, for example, that rich people have the same constant and hard struggle with boredom that the poor have with need. The second difference explains why the life of the common people bears the stamp of a dull, gloomy, monotonous seriousness, while on the forehead of a genius there is a peculiar clarity which, despite the fact that his sufferings are greater than those of men common, always shining through suffering like the sun in a storm cloud. This is even more striking when we observe a man of genius and a common man in their time of suffering. Then it is proved that the difference between them is the same as that between the man to whom it is proper to laugh and the animals which do not laugh.

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A philistine is a man who is always and very seriously concerned with a reality that is, in fact, unreal.

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Objectively, honor is others' opinion of our worth, and subjectively, it is our fear of others' opinions.

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A man alone is weak, like an abandoned Robinson: only in communion with others can he do much.

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The first commandment of women's honor consists in not engaging in concubinage with men, so that every man is obliged to resort to marriage as a surrender.

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The first forty years of our life constitute a text, and the next thirty years are commentaries on this text, making us understand its true meaning.

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After the death of the will, the death of the body can no longer be embarrassing. In this we must see the manifestation of eternal justice. What frightens the bad man the most, he being aware of it, is death itself. She, of course, is well known to the good man, but he is not afraid of her. Since all wickedness consists in the ferocious desire to live, for every man, according to the measure of his own wickedness or goodness, death is either hard or easy, nay welcome. The termination of an individual life is an evil or a good, depending on whether the man is good or evil.

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By the thing itself, or by the inner essence of the world, I mean that which is nearest to us — the will. Although this expression is subjective in relation to the subject of knowledge, and because knowledge is transmissible to others, this relationship is significant. Thus it is much better to call the essence of the world will, than Brahma, universal soul, or otherwise.

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Just as a perfect body is not exempt from filth and fetid discharges, so even the noblest character is not exempt from bad traits, and sometimes even the greatest genius is not exempt from limits.

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Just as a drowning man sinks to the bottom and rises again, so the best men come to repentance as a result of sin. So is, for example, Gretchen in Faust. Sin, in this case, acts as a nightmare from which we wake.

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The clarity of the phenomenon refers to the field of representation and is conditioned by a connection of one idea with another. And incomprehensibility begins every time a phenomenon comes into contact with the area of ​​the will, that is, when the will comes into direct contact with the idea. For example, a simple hand touch of one's own body, despite the simplicity of this phenomenon, its essence is difficult to understand. Nor are all the phenomena of organic life, of vegetation, of crystallization and the force of nature clear, for in all these cases the will manifests itself directly.

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Because philosophy is not knowledge according to the law of knowledge, but is a knowledge of ideas, it must be counted as an art, because it sets forth an idea abstractly, and not intuitively, as science does. But strictly speaking, philosophy is a cross between science and art, or something that brings them into contact.

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You have to live long and grow old to understand how short life is.

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A wise man, throughout his whole life, knows what others know only on his deathbed, knowing therefore that all life is death. Media vita sumus in morte (in the middle of life we ​​are already close to death).

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To the torments of our existence is greatly contributed by the fact that we are always oppressed by time, which does not allow us to catch our breath and is behind everyone like a torturer armed with a whip. Time only leaves in peace the one who gave in to boredom.

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We have lived and we will live again. Life is like a night unfolding in deep sleep, sleep that often turns into a nightmare.

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The true dignity of a man of genius is that which raises him above others and makes him respectable, and consists in the predominance of the intellect—that bright and pure part of human nature. Ordinary people possess only a sinful will mixed with a shred of intellect, which they need only for guidance in life, as it is given to each.

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Everyone can study science - one, harder another, easier. But from art everyone receives only as much as he himself is able to give. What, for example, will the works of Mozart give to a man who does not understand music? What do most people see in Raphael's Madonna? And do many people appreciate Goethe's "Faust"? Art does not, like science, deal only with the mind; it deals with the deepest essence of man, and therefore everyone understands in art only as much as the value he carries in himself allows him. The same applies to my philosophy, which is philosophy as art. Everyone will understand in it exactly as much as they deserve. In general, this philosophy will be accessible only to some and will be the philosophy of the paucorum hominum (those few). It seems to me that after the failure suffered for 3000 years by philosophy as a science, built i.e. according to the laws of the ground, it is already seen that, from a historical point of view, this is a wrong way. He who only knows how to find connections between ideas, to draw consequences from causes, may be a great scientist, but he will be as little a philosopher as he can be a painter, a poet or a musician. For an artist and a philosopher know things in themselves, Platonic ideas; and a scientist knows only the phenomenon, that is, the law of causality as such, because a phenomenon is nothing but the law of causality itself. Plato's expression is thus fully justified: the crowd is not capable of philosophy.

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To find contradictions in the world is to lack true criticism and to be often mistaken.

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The beginning of theology is fear. And the beginning of philosophy is nothing but pure and disinterested thinking. If people were happy, then there would be no need for theology. On the contrary, philosophy would be a necessity for minds of genius, even if there were no suffering and death in the world. From this, however, it does not follow that pure thinking is a necessary characteristic of the intellect in general; on the contrary, it is found only in monstrum per excessum, i.e. in a genius.

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Don't tell your friend what your enemy doesn't need to know.

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Does not genius depend on the perfection of a living memory? For it is only through memory, which links individual life events into an integral whole, that a wider and deeper understanding of life than that of ordinary people is possible.

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Don't challenge anyone's opinions; just realize that if you will reject all the absurdities that people believe in, then you can live to the age of Methuselah and still not be done with them.

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Will not humanity lose qualitatively as it increases quantitatively? An illustration of this supposition may be served by the fact (see Shnurer's History of Plague Injuries) that in the 14th century, after the plague, women became extremely fertile, so that cases of twin births were a common phenomenon, but in all newborns were later observed to be missing two teeth. Further, if we compare the ancient Greeks and Romans with our contemporary peoples, if we compare the age of the Vedas with the misery of the present age, and consider the fact that, despite the quantitative increase of mankind, the number of great minds has not increased - then the hypothesis above will not seem unfounded.

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The Germans are reproached for having always and in everything imitated the French and English; but they forget that this was the most intelligent thing they as a nation could do, because they would have done nothing useful and good in their own power. Despite the enormous difference between the eminent and the common people, however, this difference was not enough to form two types of people. This, in the opinion of some, might seem strange, even offensive.

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There is no better way to refresh your mind than reading the ancient classics; if you read one of these even for half an hour, you immediately feel rested, relieved and purified, uplifted and strengthened, as if you had bathed in a pure spring.

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No one has lived in the past, no one will live in the future; only the present is life.

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Nothing explains the indispensable unity of the primordial essence of our Ego with the essence of the outer world so well as the dream. For even in dreams the objects are different from ourselves, they are distinguished by their perfect objectivity and their enigmatic specificity, which is foreign to our properties; dreams inspire wonder, confusion, anxiety, etc. But all this is ourselves. So it is also with the will which carries the whole external world within itself, animating it, being shut up within us, where we perceive its immediate presence. But for all these wonders, we are indebted to the intellect, to this fantastic and wonderful workshop, to this unsurpassed magician, who decomposes his own nature into cognitive and knowable.

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The world was not created but existed from ancient times, for time is conditioned by knowing beings and therefore by the world, and the world is conditioned by time. The world without time is not possible, but neither is time possible without the world. Both are therefore inseparable, and just as time is inconceivable without the world, so the world is inconceivable apart from time.

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Nature is more aristocratic than man. The differences of title and status in European societies, as well as the differences of caste in India, are nothing compared to the differences in the mental and moral qualities of men, which are determined by nature itself. Like a social aristocracy, so in natural aristocracy there are ten thousand commoners to a nobleman, and millions of people to a prince. And here, the majority is a mob. Therefore, the patricians of nature, the so-called nobility of nature, as well as the nobility of the state, must not merge with the crowd, but, on the contrary, the higher the capacities and talents, the more they must be distinguished from the others.

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The mode of life, aspirations, and morals of insects and the lower animals may be regarded as the first steps of nature; our properties, qualities and aspirations are found in them in an embryonic state.

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With the death of each man, a certain world, which he carried in his mind, also disappears. The more intelligent the mind, the more obvious, the clearer, the more significant the world, and the more terrible its disappearance. With the death of an animal only a miserable rhapsody or a sketch of a world disappears.

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Preparing for the journey of life, it is useful to arm ourselves with a large reserve of prudence and forbearance: prudence will protect us from evils and losses, and forbearance - from disputes and quarrels.

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Adapting philosophy to authority types and making it a tool for earning money and positions is, in my opinion, the same as sharing yourself for the purpose of satisfying your hunger and thirst.

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Compassion is the basis of all morality.

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Compassion for animals is so closely connected with goodness of character that it is safe to say that one who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

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A mediocre man is concerned with how to kill his time, and a talented man tends to use it.

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The affinity between genius and virtue is based on the following: to erect a monument to a person in his lifetime is to declare that there is no chance of his being forgotten by posterity.

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To set an end to one's desires, to curb one's passions, to tame one's anger, always remembering that to each man only a small particle of all that he desires is accessible, and that a multitude of evils and disasters will befall him to each - without observing this rule, neither wealth nor power will prevent us from feeling unhappy and lamentable.

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The essence of a genius is measured by the excess of the cognitive powers over the measure required by the necessities of the will. But this definition is only relative. There are people who have cognitive aspirations stronger than will, without being geniuses; they have higher cognitive powers than ordinary people, but their will is too weak, that is, they lack strong desires. They are more concerned with knowledge as such than with its purpose; they have intelligence, talent, a cheerful and contented character, but no genius.

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Since the will is not subject to time, remorse does not pass with time, like all other sufferings. Evil torments the conscience even after many years, as painfully as immediately after its commission.

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What is in man is undoubtedly more important than what he lacks.

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What people call fate is actually a series of follies committed by them.

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Only gaiety is a currency of happiness, all others are just credit notes.

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Vanity makes a man talkative.

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Humans in general have the weakness of trusting superhuman sources more than their own minds.

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The death of Socrates and the crucifixion of Christ are among the most characteristic of humanity.

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You must refrain from any critical remarks, be they friendly: it is easy to offend a person, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to correct him.

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The works of all truly talented people are distinguished from others by a character of firmness, and therefore by clarity and certainty, because such people understand very clearly what they want to express - whether in prose, or in poetry, or in sounds. The others lack this firmness and clarity, and they immediately distinguish themselves by this lack.

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The curse of a genius is that while he appears to others as great, they appear to him as miserable and insignificant. The genius is forced to suppress this perception throughout his life, just as ordinary people keep their image of that genius within themselves. At the same time, a genius without equal lives as if he were in a desert or on a desert island inhabited only by monkeys and parrots. Moreover, he is always haunted by the threat of the illusion of mistaking an ape for a man. While the weaknesses of a great man cause the crowd a feeling of malice, he, on the contrary, feels pain because these weaknesses make him similar to the crowd.

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It is easy to preach morality, but difficult to justify.

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An experiment can replace thinking as little as reading. Pure empiricism is to thinking as eating food is to digesting and assimilating it. Even if empiricism boasts that it is the only one thanks to whose discoveries it has increased the progress of human knowledge, it brings with it the situation in which the mouth would boast that the body owes its existence to it alone.

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Space, unlike the body that fills it, obviously has no body, being therefore spiritual, that is, something that exists only in the spirit, that is, in the intellect.

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A radical improvement of the human race and the general condition of human society can be achieved if the conventional table of ranks coincides with those differences which are established by nature itself, so that the pariah of nature does all the inferior work, the sudras - all the kinds of mechanical works, if the Vaisyas were engaged in industry and commerce, if the Kshatriyas were rulers, generals, kings, and the Brahmins were engaged in the arts and sciences. But today the conventional table of ranks rarely coincides with natural differences, and is often even in flagrant contradiction with them.

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The division of the inner Self, hitherto considered indivisible, into will and cognition, was as unexpected as the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen; this is the crucial point of my philosophy and at the same time the beginning of the strict distinction between visual and abstract cognition.

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The difference in the measure of spiritual powers, which constitutes the deep gulf between a genius and a common mortal, depends on nothing else than the more or less advanced development of the cerebral system; but this difference is so great, because the whole real world, in which we live, exists only in relation to the cerebral system, and therefore as this system looks, so does the world look.

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The difference between dogmatism and criticism is that the latter tries to wake us up and the former sways us even more. Many scientists are opponents of philosophy only because they only notice the aforementioned property of dogmatism, and they reject criticism for its difficulty.

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No matter how often the surface of the Earth with all living beings is destroyed as a result of cosmic cataclysms, and no matter how many new beings appear - all this is nothing but a change of scenery on the universal stage.

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Tell me when space appeared and its fleeting bride - time; when was their child born - matter, with which came the sufferings of the world? Because together with space began suffering, together with time - death.

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A symbol is a center from which many rays proceed, - a picture in which each, from his point of view, sees something else, but at the same time all are convinced that they see one and the same thing.

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A cigar can serve as an effective substitute for thought.

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The suicidal person stops living precisely because he cannot stop wanting.

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The truest consolation in all trouble and suffering lies in the contemplation of people who are more unhappy than we are - and this is accessible to everyone.

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From the point of view of youth, life is an infinitely long future; from the point of view of old age, life is a very short past.

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Life and dreams are the pages of one and the same book.

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Health is so much above all other goods of life, that it is true that a healthy beggar is happier than a sick king.

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Of all the personal traits, a cheerful nature contributes most directly to our happiness.

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An individual could not have known anything about the essence of the world, given to him only as an idea, if he had not had the faculty of knowing, by which he learns that the Universe of which he is an infinitesimal part, is identical with that particle known to him closely as his inner world. Thus, the Self gives a clue in the unraveling of the world.

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Intellect can be seen as a barrier or a brake that prevents separate individuals from communicating with each other and closes the path of knowledge to the future or to something absent. For the knowledge of all these would be as useless and painful to us as the sensibility and receptivity of a plant without irritability and movement would be torturous.

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Intellectuality or representativeness is too weak, secondary, superficial a phenomenon for the essence of all others to be based on it; the world, although represented in the intellect, does not result from it, as Fichte believed.

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True friendship is one of those things that, like giant sea serpents, you don't know if they are imagined or actually exist somewhere.

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A man's true character is revealed precisely in the details, when he ceases to control himself.

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To marry is to halve your rights and double your obligations.

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There is a special kind of courage that comes from the same source as human kindness, from the ability to know yourself in others as clearly as you know yourself. Courage comes from this because a man endowed with the ability to know himself in others is less attached to his personal existence, lives more of a communal life, and therefore cares little for his own welfare. Of course, this is not the only source of courage, for courage is the result of many causes, but this kind of courage is the noblest, because it proves a greater meekness of character. Women are irresistibly influenced by such characters.

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There is only one inborn error - the belief that we are born for happiness.

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Conscience is the only witness of man's most secret thoughts and movements; but eventually we lose it - and we know it. Yet perhaps it is precisely this circumstance, more than anything else, that makes us believe that there is still a witness to our most secret thoughts and goings-on.

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If you don't want to make enemies, try not to show your superiority over people.

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If it were possible to predict the future as we know the past, then the day of death would seem as close to its past as, for example, childhood.

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If the immediate and immediate purpose of our life is not suffering, then our existence is a meaningless and inadequate phenomenon. Because it is absurd to admit the endless suffering that arises from the essential needs of life and fills the whole world to be aimless and purely accidental. Although each misfortune taken separately is an exception, misfortune in general is the rule.

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If the will were only in a particular deed, then the latter would be free. But since it is found throughout lifetimes, that is, in a series of deeds, then each of these, as part of a whole, is predetermined and cannot be otherwise than it is. On the contrary, the whole string taken as a whole, being the discovery of the individualized will, is free.

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If on the last step of its creation - from ape to man - nature had done differently, starting with the elephant or the dog, for example, then the human race would probably have been different than it is now; he would then have been a rational elephant or dog, and not a rational ape. Nature took this step starting from the ape, because it was the shortest; but if the slightest change had taken place in the original development of nature, then the shortest step towards man would have been made otherwise.

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If you suspect someone of lying - pretend to believe him: he will lie without care and expose himself. And if the truth he wanted to hide crept into his words - pretend not to believe him; he will also tell the rest of the truth.

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If a joke hides behind something serious - it is an irony; if something serious is hidden behind a joke - it's humor.

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The source of lies is always the desire to extend the dominance of one's own will or the denial of the will of others in order to assert one's own; therefore, a lie is born of injustice, ill-will, and malice. This explains why truthfulness, sincerity, frankness, are directly recognized and appreciated as noble qualities, because it is assumed that the man who possesses them will commit no injustice or cruelty, and therefore has no need of pretense. He who is honest does not plan anything bad.

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What conclusion did Voltaire, Hume and Kant ultimately reach? Because the world is a hospital for the incurably ill.

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If worries and sufferings disturb us, then inspiration is impossible. Only with the disappearance of concerns and desires does freedom appear; only then does genius cast off its chains and become a pure contemplative subject. Therefore, let him who is visited by inspiration avoid suffering, cares, and lusts, and those desires which cannot be suppressed, let him satisfactorily fulfill them. Only then can the genius use his rare existence, for his own joy and for the common good.

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When I listen to music, it often seems to me that the lives of all people, like my life, are the dreams of an eternal spirit and death is an awakening.

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The ultimate goal of all knowledge is that the intelligence must perceive all manifestations of the will not only by visual contemplation (since they are perceived thus and implicitly), but also by means of abstract knowledge, in the sense that everything that exists in the will, to exist and in its representation. Every rational activity, like science, tends towards this.

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Kings and servants are called only by their first names, and not by their surnames. These are the two extreme rungs of the social ladder.

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Beauty is an open letter of recommendation that wins the heart before anything else.

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He who reasons a lot finds it naturally difficult to put arguments aside and pass from the rapid flow of concepts to the quiet fountain of contemplation. But this is necessary; for the light of concepts, like the light of the moon, is not original, but borrowed from another.

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It is better to discover your mind in silence than in conversation.

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Magic is considered evil and is far from the idea of ​​holiness and goodness, because, relying, like goodness and love, on the metaphysical unity of the will, instead of knowing itself in others, it takes advantage of this unity to spread the influence of the individual will far beyond its natural limits.

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When you are possessed by a selfish feeling - joy, triumph, pleasure, hope or terrible pain, anger, anger, fear, suspicion, jealousy - then know that you are in the clutches of the devil. It doesn't matter how you got there. You must escape. How? Anyway.

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A playing card is obvious evidence of the bankruptcy of reason. Unable to exchange thoughts, people exchange books.

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The advantages of polygamy are added, among others, by the fact that it excludes clashes with the wife's parents, necessary in monogamy, a fear that holds many back from marriage. But on the other hand, dealing with ten mothers-in-law instead of one is also not a very pleasant prospect.

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Every nation mocks another, and all are right in their own way.

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Each writer must be understood as he himself would like to be understood. Such an attitude requires, on the one hand, a spirit of justice, and, on the other, study.

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Every society needs, first of all, to adapt, because it is all the more vulgar the bigger it is. Every man can be fully himself only when he is alone. Therefore, he who does not love solitude does not love freedom either, because man is free only when he is alone. Coercion is necessary for any society; every society requires sacrifices which are all the heavier the greater the personality of that society.

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The following consolation is available to each of us: death is as natural as life, and what will be beyond, we will see.

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Just as animals do some things better than humans, such as finding a way or a lost object, so the average human is capable and more useful in everyday situations than a genius. And then, just as animals never do stupid things, so an average person does less stupid things than a genius.

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Just as a medicine does not achieve its purpose if the dose is too high, so does censorship and criticism when they exceed a certain limit.

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As you bear the weight of your own body without noticing it, so you do not notice your own vices or defects, seeing only those of strangers. For this, everyone finds a mirror in another man, a mirror in which he can clearly see his own vices, shortcomings and all kinds of other evils.

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Between a genius and a madman there is a similarity: both live in a world totally different from everyone else's.

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Do you think that philosophy will not be, like a true work of art, an incomparable standard against which anyone can measure his height? Or do you think it will be a simple calculation problem that is accessible to even the most limited and stupid mind?

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He to whom men and things do not sometimes seem ghosts or apparitions, is not capable of practicing philosophy; this difference comes from the contrast between a certain thing and its idea, which manifests itself in the thing as a phenomenon. And the idea is accessible only to a higher consciousness.

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Every kind of human perfection is related to some shortcoming, into which it can turn; and conversely, to each imperfection corresponds a certain perfection. That's why the mistake we sometimes make about a person is often based on the fact that at the beginning of the relationship we confuse their shortcomings with their related perfections or vice versa. Thus, we can consider a coward cautious, a hoarder a miser, and a spendthrift - generous, rudeness appears to us as frankness, and sincerity and arrogance appear in our eyes as noble self-confidence.

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Any restriction makes you happy. The narrower our horizon, the sphere of action and contact, the happier we are; the wider it is, the more we suffer from torment and anguish. Because with their expansion, our desires, concerns and fears multiply and grow.

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All general norms of behavior are not sufficient, because they are based on a false assumption of equality between men - the assumption established in Helvetia's system; meanwhile the fundamental difference between men in intellect and morality is boundless.

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All villains are unfortunately very sociable.

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Whatever is intellectual (created works, capacities, and merits) relates to morality, as image relates to reality.

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All natural sciences have an inevitable shortcoming, which is that they look exclusively at the objective side of nature, forgetting about its subjective side. Meanwhile, the whole essence lies in the latter, and this, of necessity, relates to philosophy.

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The question of the reality of morality boils down to whether there really is a grounded principle, opposed to the principle of selfishness. Since selfishness demands welfare for only one individual, the contrary principle should extend this demand to all others.

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The human will is directed towards the same goal as in animals - towards food and reproduction. But what a complex and intelligent apparatus is given to men to achieve this end - how much mind, thought and subtle abstractions man uses even in everyday affairs! However, a man, like an animal, pursues and achieves the same goal. To clarify, I will make two comparisons: wine poured into a clay pot or a well-crafted cup remains the same; or two absolutely identical blades of the same metal and made in the same way may have different handles: one of gold, the other of brass.

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Along with the law of foundation (in the form of causal foundation) matter is also given; because, if we go deeper, it is identical to this law. Indeed, matter is nothing but causality; its existence consists in the impact of one substance on another (that is, in the impact on the self). The fact that a part of matter (namely the organic one) is the immediate object of the subject and is explained by the existence of the object, that is, of the world, matter, only together with the subject and for the subject. But the true essence of matter consists exclusively in its reality (matter without action, that is, without power, is inconceivable, being an internal contradiction) - and it acts only on itself. Its essence, therefore, is, on the one hand, its connection with itself and, on the other, its relation to the subject.

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In old age, there is no greater comfort than the knowledge that all the powers of youth have been laid down in a work that does not grow old.

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In practical life a genius is as useful as a telescope in the theater.

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Newspapers are secondary to history.

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A man of genius is not merely a moral being, as ordinary men are; on the contrary, he is the bearer of the intelligence of several centuries and of the whole world. That is why he lives more for others than for himself.

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A man of genius, living and creating, sacrifices his personal interests for the good of all mankind. Therefore he is not obliged to sacrifice himself in particular for the interests of particular persons, and therefore has the right to waive some requirements binding on others; even though he suffers, he gives much more than others.

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Friendship is based on mutual good, on common interests, but as soon as interests collide, friendship falls apart: the wind took it.

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Philosophers before me dealt with the doctrine of free will; and I speak of the omnipotence of the will.

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To be an artist or a philosopher requires two qualities: 1) genius, namely the capacity for knowledge beyond the founding law or the capacity for knowledge of ideas, and 2) the capacity to study ideas through the science of reproducing them in a material some (as concepts are for a philosopher). Spinoza possessed the first quality as befits a philosopher - to the greatest degree; however, he lacked the second quality - he did not have, so to speak, a philosophical technique, he did not know how to reproduce in abstracto the essence of the world that he knew intuitively. He was in the nets of Cartesian and scholastic concepts, from which he could not escape.

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Do we not become arrogant or, on the contrary, humbled at the sight of the poverty of others? On one, it acts in one way, on another, in another way - this also explains the differences in character.

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Action according to instinct differs from all other actions in that the notion of purpose arises from it as a consequence, while to other actions this notion is antecedent. An instinct, therefore, is a priori a rule given to some action, the end of which may therefore be as yet unknown; in order to achieve this goal it is not necessary to have any notion of it. On the contrary, a reasonable or prudent action is performed according to a certain rule, drawn up according to the notion of purpose, and therefore it may turn out to be a mistake, while instinct never errs.

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Nine tenths of our happiness is based on health. Hence the conclusion that the greatest folly would be to sacrifice our health for whatever it is: wealth, career, education, fame, not to mention sensual and fleeting pleasures; rather, all these are worth sacrificing for health.

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Pride is man's inner conviction of great personal worth, while vanity is the desire to create this conviction for others, with the secret hope of later appropriating it for ourselves.

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Stupid people are mostly bad for the same reason that ugly people are generally bad. On the other hand, genius and holiness also have something in common. However simple a saint may be, certain traits of genius are observed in him, and conversely, no matter how corrupt the character of a genius, he is distinguished by a state of mind elevated almost to sainthood.

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A fool is like a drowsy and dreamy fool, a wise man, on the contrary, is one who watches, who sees his chains and hears their rattle. Will he take advantage of the wakefulness to escape?

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A fool pursues pleasure and finds disappointment; and the wise man avoids suffering.

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The main characteristic of the Italian national character is the absolute lack of shame. A shameless man behaves either too badly, and then he is cheeky and arrogant, or too modest, and then he is nothing. On the contrary, a shy man is either too shy or too proud.

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A man of genius cannot be a monster, because anger is an expression of unbridled desire that demands an entire intelligence for the satisfaction of its needs and therefore excludes the possibility of pure contemplation. A monster may have a great mind, but he can only use it for what pertains to will. A bad man may therefore be a great conqueror, a statesman, &c. Finally, he may actually have talent. This word, as is well known, in ancient times meant money, and now denotes skills by which the approval of the crowd is acquired, and therefore money.

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Most people, instead of aspiring to the good, are thirsty for happiness, brilliance and stability, being like stupid actors who always want to play big, brilliant and noble roles, not realizing that what is more important is not what and how much you play, but how you play.

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Disease is nature's own remedy for healing a dysfunction of the body; therefore, a medicine only helps the healing power of nature.

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The existence of the world, according to my teaching, is explained by the omnipotence of the will. Also, the phenomena of animal magnetism and those similar to it show that magical actions, previously considered as actions of the devil, are done by force of will. Due to the fact that these actions have empirical authenticity, from now on my teaching will no longer seem so paradoxical and will become easier to understand. Indeed, if the will of man can sometimes do what was considered only the power of the devil, then it can also do what was hitherto attributed only to the omnipotence of the gods.

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In mathematics, the mind is exclusively occupied with its own forms of knowledge - time and space - and is therefore like a cat playing with its own tail.

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At the moment of death, egoism falls apart. Thus the fear of death arises. Death, therefore, is a kind of lesson given to selfishness, addressed by the nature of things.

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There are few good features in the national character, for its subject is a mob.

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In solitude, everyone sees in himself what he really is.

"In the same way that fireworks and torches cannot be seen in the light of the sun, the best intellect and the greatest beauty cannot be seen in the light of the kindness of a single heart."

"Every misconception is a poison; there are no harmless misconceptions."

"It is difficult if not impossible to find some reasonable limit for acquiring more and more property."

"Freeing a person from misconceptions, false truths, and lies does not take anything from him; it gives him something important."

"In real life illusions can only transform our life for a moment, but in the domain of thoughts and the intellect, misconceptions may be accepted as truth for thousands of years, and make a laughingstock of whole nations, mute the noble wishes of mankind, make slaves from people and lie to them. These misconceptions are the enemies with which the wisest men in the history of mankind try to struggle. The force of the truth is great, but its victory is difficult. However, once you receive this victory, it can never be taken from you."

"As our self-interest diminishes, our anxieties disappear, and then comes quiet and firm joy, which always diffuses us with a good spiritual disposition and a clear conscience. Every good deed helps to kindle this feeling of joy within us. The egoist feels lonely, surrounded by threatening and alien events; all his desires are sunk in his own concerns. A kind person lives in a world of beneficent events, whose goodness matches his own."

"Someone told me once that every person has an element of good and an element of bad within him, and that either the good or the bad can be manifested according to the person’s mood. We possess within us two different ways of understanding this world. One is the feeling of being divided, distanced, and alienated from each other; in this state, all things seem gloomy to us. We feel nothing except jealousy, indifference, and hatred. I would like to call the opposite way of understanding the understanding of universal unification. In this state, all people seem very close to us, and all are equal among themselves. This state, therefore, arouses compassion and love in us."

"A work of art makes a great impression on us only when it gives us something which, even with all the efforts of our intellect, we cannot understand completely."

"Every good or charitable action, every unprofitable assistance which supports other people in need, when we come to its origins and foundations, becomes a mysterious and unexplainable thing, because it comes out of the mysterious understanding of the unity of all living beings, and it can be explained by nothing else."

"Compassion for animals is closely connected with character type. You can say with confidence that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a kind man."

"Only the truth which was acquired by your own thinking, through the efforts of your intellect, becomes a member of your own body, and only this truth really belongs to us."

"Compassion for animals is so closely connected with kindness that you can truly say that a person cannot be kind if he is cruel to animals. Compassion for animals comes from the same source as compassion toward people."

"It is a mistake to believe that we need obey no moral in our attitude to the animals, that we have no moral responsibilities to them. This way lies complete vulgarity and rudeness."

"A constant flow of thoughts expressed by other people can stop and deaden your own thought and your own initiative. . . . That is why constant learning softens your brain. ... Stopping the creation of your own thoughts to give room for the thoughts from other books reminds me of Shakespeare’s remark about his contemporaries who sold their land in order to see other countries."

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Everyone believes that the limits of their own imagination are the same as the limits of the world.

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We can only make our favorite animal happy within narrow limits. This is also the case with humans: their individuality determines the extent of their possible happiness from the outset.

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Sex is the cause of war and the goal of peace... the key to every hint, every secret glance, every unspoken offer and the content of every furtive glance; the daily concern and thought of the young and often of the old as well... it is constantly ready material for jokes, only because it is based on the deepest seriousness. Because the piquancy and joke of the world is that... it is everyone's main business, yet it is pursued secretly... by achieving which we believe that everything has been achieved, and by failing that, that everything has been failed.

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Why does (...) the lover depend so completely on the gaze of his chosen one; and why is he willing to sacrifice everything for her? - Because this is his immortal part that longs for him; and after everything else, it is always only the mortal part.

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If we look into the bustling multitude of life, we see that everyone is troubled with the misery and toil of life; and he exerts all his strength to satisfy his endless needs and ward off the many forms of suffering. (...) And in the midst of the bustle and crowding, we see how the eyes of two lovers meet longingly: - but why so secretly and shyly and stealthily? - because these lovers are the traitors, who secretly strive to make all this trouble and misery an heir, although otherwise it would soon end.

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Life: a task, a job that must be done, and therefore usually a continuous struggle against necessity. That is why everyone is trying to oversell and row through it as soon as possible: he ends life as the slave labor that he owed it to. But who created the debt? His progeny, in the pleasure of lust. So because one enjoyed it, the other must live, suffer and die.

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We feel pain, but not painlessness; we feel care but not carelessness, fear but not certainty. The three greatest goods of life: health, youth and freedom, that's why we don't even feel them while we have them, but only after we've lost them... We only realize that some days of our life were happy, only after they gave way to unhappy days.

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The foolish belief that our behavior towards animals has no moral significance - or to speak in the language of this moral understanding: we have no duties towards animals - is outrageous rudeness and barbarism.

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There is no certain truth, as the whole world is an object for the subject.

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We are like the lambs that play in the field, while the butcher has already selected one or the other: for we do not know in our good days what fate has determined for us at any moment - sickness, persecution, impoverishment, misery, blindness, madness, death .

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Life swings like a pendulum between pain and boredom.

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On Earth, humans are the devils; and the animals are the tormented souls.

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Who could bear the thought of death if living were a joy?

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All people should be respected, no matter how deplorable or ridiculous. We must remember that all people have the same soul as we do. Even if the other person is physically and mentally repulsive, we must think: "Yes, there must be such horrors, and they must be endured." If we show them our distaste, firstly, we are being unfair, and secondly, we challenge them to a fight that is not for the concert, but for their very existence. Either way, he is unable to change himself. What can you do? He fights us as his mortal enemy. After all, we actually want to be good to them when they have already changed and are not what they are. But this is impossible for them. That is why we must have good intentions towards all people, whatever they may be, and not expect from them what other people are unable to do.

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One should only read when the source of one's own thoughts is blocked, which surely happens to even the best mind. On the contrary, if you drive away your own primal thoughts with the book you put in your hands, this is a sin against the holy spirit.

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A man can do what he wants, but he cannot will as he likes.

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Even if someone is young, beautiful, rich, respected, if you want to judge whether they are happy, you will ask whether they are cheerful. However, if someone is happy, it doesn't matter whether he is young or old, healthy or hunchbacked, poor or rich - he is sure to be happy.

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Beauty is an open letter of recommendation, which wins hearts for us from the start.

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It is not the man or the woman who wants love, but the mighty third who does not exist, but wants to be.

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In order to voluntarily and freely recognize and appreciate someone else's value, we must have it ourselves.

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Religions are children of ignorance; they do not outlive their parents.

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Human love, although in very different forms, is always selfish.

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Faith and knowledge are like two pans on a scale: as soon as one rises, the other falls.

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Putting logic to practical use seems like asking mechanics for advice before we want to walk.

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Writing knows only one rule: to have something to say.

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It is always better to consider what the other person does not say than what they say.

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Almost all of our sorrows stem from our relationships with others.

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Every person's life, despite all external changes, usually bears the same character and can be compared to variations of the same theme. No one can strip you of your individuality!

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The highest, most varied, and most permanent pleasures are spiritual, however much we may be disappointed in them in our youth; however, these largely depend on the strength of the spirit. This already shows how much our happiness depends on who we are.

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And if a misfortune befalls us, which we can no longer change, we must not even think that it could have happened otherwise; even less about how we could have prevented it, because that would make the pain unbearable, we would become our own torturers.

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People's envy shows how unhappy they feel; and their constant attention to the actions of others is a sign of how bored they are.

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Just as clothes cover our bodies, lies also cover our souls. Our words, our actions, our whole being are liars. Our true soul can only be glimpsed through this shell, just like the contours of the body through clothes.

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Glory...must be earned; honor, on the other hand, should not be lost.

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Existing wealth should be seen as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that may occur, and not as an obligatory means of acquiring the pleasures of the world.

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Health is not everything, but without health everything is nothing.

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Life is not meant to be enjoyed, but to be lived through and completed.

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All animal beings, including humans, need a certain correspondence and proportion between their will and reason in order to be able to take their place in the world and prosper. The more precisely and correctly nature has hit this, the easier, more secure and more pleasant it will be to live your life. In addition, the mere approach to the actual correct point will be enough to protect it from deterioration.

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That arithmetic is the lowest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be performed by a machine.

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How beautiful and significant certain scenes and events of our past life appear in our memory, even though at the time we let them pass without any special appreciation!

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There are moments in life when, without any external reason, but rather as a result of an intensification of receptivity that starts from within and can certainly only be explained physiologically, the sensory perception of the environment and the present rises to a higher and rare level of clarity, as a result of which such moments later become indelibly etched in our memory, and the whole they remain in our individuality, without us knowing why or why they are among the thousands of others like them, but rather quite by chance, like certain specimens of entire extinct species of animals that survive in the rock strata, or like those insects that once upon a time, by chance, on the occasion of the opening of a book they were pressed together.

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In space, distance makes everything smaller, because it shrinks everything, as a result of which defects and eclipses disappear, which is why everything appears much more beautiful in a magnifying mirror or camera obscura than in reality. This is exactly how the past affects time: long-gone scenes and processes together with the characters appear beautiful in the memory, because it hides everything that is irrelevant and disturbing. The present, which lacks this advantage, always appears handicapped.

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Modesty is mere honesty in the case of mediocre talents, hypocrisy in the case of great talents.

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There is no surer sign of greatness than to ignore hurtful or insulting statements, if, like countless other errors, we attribute them without any theory to the weak knowledge of the speaker, and therefore only notice, but do not feel.

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It is often only years later that we see the actions of others in the right light, and sometimes even our own.

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Just as in present events, we also do not easily recognize what is significant about them: only when they are in the past does their significance stand out - highlighted by memory, representation, and narration.

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The course and events of our individual lives, in terms of their true meaning and connection, can be compared to rougher mosaic works. As long as we stand directly in front of them, we do not really recognize the depicted objects, and we do not notice either their importance or their beauty: both are visible only at a certain distance.

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If you want to know how you really feel about someone, observe how it affects you when you receive a letter from them unexpectedly.

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The pain caused by an unfulfilled wish is small compared to that caused by regret: because that one faces the always questionable, unforeseeable future, this one faces the irrevocably closed past.

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Although the character is completely consistent and connected, the root of all its properties is much deeper, so that it would not be possible to determine from scattered data which ones may or may not occur together with each other.

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Hope is the exchange of the wish for an event with the probability of that event.

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Instinctively, we are more inclined to hope than to worry - as soon as our eyes naturally turn to the light, not the darkness.

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The desire that lives in everyone to be remembered after his death, and which in the ambitious becomes a desire for glory, seems to me to come from the attachment to life, which, when it sees itself cut off from all possibilities of real existence, now the still alone it is possible, even if it is only an ideal existence, so it reaches for a shadow.

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Our friends say they are honest, our enemies really are; that's why we should use their scolding as bitter medicine, for the benefit of our self-knowledge.

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The deep grief we feel at the death of a loved one stems from the intuition that there is something indescribable in each individual, something unique to him and therefore completely irreplaceable.

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To forgive and forget is to throw precious experiences out the window.

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We give up three quarters of our individuality in order to be like others.

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If you want your judgment to be accepted, say it coldly and without emotion.

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The present never satisfies; and the future is uncertain, and the past is irreversible.

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There is only one mistake we are born with: believing that we live to be happy.

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Man is a prisoner of his own will.

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We rarely think about what we have and too often about what we don't have. This attitude has caused more misery to mankind than all the wars and epidemics combined.

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The thought dies as soon as it takes shape in words.

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A problem goes through three phases before it is recognized as real. At first it seems ridiculous, then they fight against it, and finally they take it for granted.

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Nine-tenths of our happiness rests solely on our health. If you have health, it becomes the source of all pleasures, but if you don't have it, other goods and subjective values ​​don't make you happy either, because the spirit, the mood, the temperament also reduces and is crippled by illness.

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Neither to love nor to hate contains half of all the wisdom of life; "say nothing and believe nothing" the other half.

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We will win if we sacrifice pleasure to avoid pain.

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In general, it is better to show your mind by what you keep silent than by what you say.

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Throughout our lives, we always possess only the present and never more. The only difference is that at the beginning we see a long future in front of us, and towards the end a long past behind us.

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It takes a stronger character to retract an erroneous view than to defend it.

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Discovering something means seeing what everyone sees and thinking what no one else has.

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Those who write for fools always find a large audience.

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To wish someone to remember everything they've ever read is like wishing they could still carry everything they've ever eaten. He lived from this materially, from that spiritually, and that is how he became what he is. But as soon as the body assimilates what is homogeneous with it, everyone will retain in his mind what interests him, that is, what fits his system of thoughts or his goals.

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It would be nice to buy books if you could also buy the time needed to read them. But mostly they exchange the purchase (owning) of the books with the acquisition (owning) of their content.

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In order to read the good, it is necessary not to read the bad. Because life is short, time and energy are limited.

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The indolence of bad books, this rampant literary weed that deprives the grain of its nourishment and suffocates it. In other words, these products capture the public's time, money, and interest, which is true of good books and their noble goals, even though they were written only with the intention of making money or gaining office. So they are not only useless, but downright harmful.

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Human knowledge is impenetrable in all directions, and each person cannot even know a thousandth part of what is generally worthy of knowledge.

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The human word is the most durable material. If a poet has embodied his most fleeting feeling in words that are sufficiently suitable for him, then he lives in them for thousands of years and comes to a new life in every receptive reader.

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The merely learned truth only sticks to us like a limb fitted to us, a false tooth, a nose made of wax or, at worst, like a rhinoplastic nose made of foreign flesh. The truth acquired through independent thinking, on the other hand, resembles a natural part of the body, only it is truly ours.

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The true power of custom (...) is actually based on the dullness, which wants to spare the mind and the will from the work, difficulty and danger of choosing differently, and therefore makes us do today what we did yesterday and a hundred times, and about which we know it leads to its goal.

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What (...) for bodies, insofar as they are only under the influence of mechanical causes, is the power of inertia, the same for bodies, insofar as they are influenced by motives, is the power of habit.

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In more or less everything we do and buy, we long for the end, we wait impatiently to be ready and we are glad when we are ready. We just want the final end, the end of all ends, properly, as late as possible.

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Everyone wears a mask and plays a part. In general, the whole social life is a continuous comedy.

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All arbitrariness is based on the substitution of will for cognition.

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Hatred is a matter of the heart, contempt is of the head.

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With the different forms of human happiness, we are mostly like with certain groups of trees, which, viewed from a distance, paint amazingly well. But when we approach and enter, this beauty disappears: we do not know where it has gone; we are among trees: that's all. It is based on this that we so often envy the situation of others.

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Reason (...) is what qualifies a person not only to live in the present, like an animal, but also to review and think about the past and the future. From this comes his caution, worry and frequent anxiety.

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There are (...) people who never admit their few and tiny weaknesses, on the contrary: they hide them carefully, and are extremely sensitive to all hints about them. This is due to the fact that their entire merit lies in the absence of errors and eclipses, which means that they are directly undermined by any error that comes to light.