“ If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at it, you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary..… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ Schopenhauer said only men had the total objectivity necessary for genius, and that you only had to look at a woman’s shape to see that she wasn’t intended for much mental or physical work. Jacky Fleming
“ That streetside tree is obscuring the air. Cut it down. Haul it in for questioning. There are secrets within that foliage. You might want to separate the branches in different rooms and apply some ele… Benson Bruno
“ [I]n other words, we should live with due knowledge of the course of things in the world. For whenever a man in any way loses self-control, or is struck down by a misfortune, grows angry, or loses hea… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ What light is to the outer physical world intellect is to the inner world of consciousness. For intellect is related to the will, and thus also to the organism which is nothing other than will regarde… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ This, for both Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, is the central tragedy of human life; if only men would learn how little the cleverest and most gifted among them can control, how little they can know of all… Isaiah Berlin
“ The true basis and propaedeutic for all knowledge of human nature is the persuasion that a man's actions are, essentially and as a whole, not directed by his reason and its designs; so that no one bec… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ From *the form of time and of the single dimension* of the series of representations, on account of which the intellect, in order to take up one thing, must drop everything else, there follows not onl… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable. Guy de Maupassant
“ Now this was possible only by a man determining himself entirely *rationally* according to concepts, not according to changing impressions and moods. But as only the maxims of our conduct, not the con… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ ....and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth. Guy de Maupassant
“ Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy... Arthur Schopenhauer
“ A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author's thoughts; and the value of these will lie either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form which his thoughts take, in… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ In fact, the balance wheel which maintains in motion the watch of metaphysics that never runs down, is the clear knowledge that this world's non-existence is just as possible as its existence."―from_T… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ What is more, in fact, we very soon look upon the world as something whose non-existence is not only conceivable, but even preferable to its existence. Therefore our astonishment at it easily passes i… Arthur Schopenhauer
“ I bear within me the seed, the rudiments, the possibility of life's capacities and endeavors. Where might I be, if I were not here? Who, what, how could I be, if I were not me, if this outward appeara… Thomas Mann
“ The only way you can talk about this great tide in which you’re a participant is as Schopenhauer did: the universe is a dream dreamed by a single dreamer where all the dream characters dream too. Joseph Campbell
“ The will has no overall purpose, aims at no highest good, and can never be satisfied. Although it is our essence, it strikes us as an alien agency within, striving for life and procreation blindly, me… Christopher Janaway
