Arthur Schopenhauer: Quotes about life

Arthur Schopenhauer was German philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Arthur Schopenhauer: 522 quotes33 likes

“They tell us that Suicide is the greatest piece of Cowardice… That Suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in this world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

“Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 2: Our Relation To Ourselves http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/counsels/chapter2.html <br class="br">Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims <br class="br">Context: Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

“In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

"On the Sufferings of the World"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism
Context: In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.

“The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves it to the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2 "On Philosophy and the Intellect" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Context: The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves it to the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.

“Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 2: Our Relation To Ourselves http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/counsels/chapter2.html <br class="br">Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims <br class="br">Context: Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

“Life is a constant process of dying.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

“The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

“If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

“If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

Source: The Vanity of Existence

“Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

“In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

“Each day is a little life.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

“Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research … He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, — the metaphysical unity of life.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 273 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/273/mode/2up-274 <br class="br">On the Basis of Morality (1840)

“The purpose of his [the Philistine’s] life is to procure for himself everything that contributes to bodily welfare. He is happy enough when this causes him a lot of trouble. For if those good things are heaped on him in advance, he will inevitably lapse into boredom.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Sich Alles, was zum leiblichen Wohlseyn beiträgt, zu verschaffen, ist der Zweck seines Lebens. Glücklich genug, wenn dieser ihm viel zu schaffen macht! Denn, sind jene Güter ihm schon zum voraus oktroyirt; so fällt er unausbleiblich der Langenweile anheim.
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 344
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

“If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are old, after being separated for a life-time, the chief feeling they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much — and then performed so little.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

"On the Sufferings of the World"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism

“Thus, because Christian morals leave animals out of consideration … therefore in philosophical morals they are of course at once outlawed; they are merely "things," simply means to ends of any sort; and so they are good for vivisection, for deer-stalking, bull-fights, horse-races, etc., and they may be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy quarry carts. Shame on such a morality … which fails to recognize the Eternal Reality immanent in everything that has life, and shining forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part II, Ch. VI, pp. 94 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/94/mode/2up-95 <br class="br">On the Basis of Morality (1840)